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Anaerobic Environmental Biotechnology and Sustainability II
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Anaerobic Environmental Biotechnology and Sustainability II

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Sustainable Engineering and Science".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 April 2024 | Viewed by 4215

Special Issue Editor

Prof. Dr. Goksel Demirer

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Guest Editor
School of Engineering & Technology, Institute for Great Lakes Research, Central Michigan University, Mt Pleasant, MI 48859, USA
Interests: anaerobic environmental biotechnology; wastewater engineering; waste valorization; resource efficiency; sustainability; pollution prevention; industrial ecology
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Anaerobic environmental biotechnology (AEB) has traditionally been used for the stabilization of agricultural waste and wastewater treatment sludge. With the advancement in reactor configurations and biomass immobilization techniques, industrial and even domestic wastewaters could be successfully treated with anaerobic systems. Lower operating costs, the generation of biomethane, high efficiencies, especially for high-strength wastes, etc., have resulted in a widespread adoption of these systems. However, the potential applications of AEB towards integrated sustainable waste management and value-added bio-based product formation are still in their infancy.

Waste valorization aims at accomplishing a closed-loop system to maximize the recovery of valuable materials derived from the waste at end-of-life. The wastes should be considered as “renewable resources” that can be used again to generate valuable and marketable products, replacing the exhaustible fossil-based resources. AEB offers a significant waste valorization opportunity while contributing to greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation targets.

AEB converts a wide range of biomasses into biogas effectively. Biogas can be upgraded to methane, which can also be compressed and used directly as a transport fuel in vehicles designed to run on gas. If CO2 and other unwanted compounds are removed from the biogas, the methane remaining can be injected directly into the natural gas grid. This will lead to a displacement of natural gas and a consequent reduction in GHG emissions. The effluent of the anaerobic processes (digestate) is a valuable bio-fertilizer that can be used as a renewable source of critical resources, such as nitrogen and phosphorus. It can be used directly as a fertilizer or can be processed further to produce a slow-release fertilizer called struvite.

Moreover, alternative approaches of processing of biomass through AEB can be used to produce organic acids and/or alcohols instead of methane containing biogas. Alternatively, biomass processing can aim for other gaseous products like molecular hydrogen or direct generation of electricity in microbial fuel cells. Several other pathways could also be adopted to generate other high-value products from low-value feedstocks via coupling AEB with other processes.

This Special Issue on “Anaerobic Environmental Biotechnology and Sustainability” calls for original research articles on innovative applications, approaches, case studies, and best practices of AEB towards sustainable waste management and resource recovery practices.

Contributors from academia as well as industry that allow a broader perspective and practical aspects are welcomed.

Prof. Dr. Goksel Demirer
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Published Papers (3 papers)

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19 pages, 3046 KiB  
Article
Enrichment of Microbial Consortium with Hydrogenotrophic Methanogens for Biological Biogas Upgrade to Biomethane in a Bubble Reactor under Mesophilic Conditions
by Apostolos Spyridonidis, Ioanna A. Vasiliadou, Panagiota Stathopoulou, Athanasios Tsiamis, George Tsiamis and Katerina Stamatelatou
Sustainability 2023, 15(21), 15247; https://doi.org/10.3390/su152115247 - 25 Oct 2023
Viewed by 772
Abstract
The biological upgrading of biogas to simulate natural gas properties contributes to the sustainable establishment of biogas technology. It is an alternative technology to the conventional physicochemical methods applied in biomethane plants and has been studied mainly in thermophilic conditions. Developing an enriched [...] Read more.
The biological upgrading of biogas to simulate natural gas properties contributes to the sustainable establishment of biogas technology. It is an alternative technology to the conventional physicochemical methods applied in biomethane plants and has been studied mainly in thermophilic conditions. Developing an enriched culture for converting the CO2 of biogas to CH4 in mesophilic conditions was the subject of the present study, which could facilitate the biological process and establish it in the mesophilic range of temperature. The enrichment took place via successive dilutions in a bubble bioreactor operated in fed-batch mode. The methane percentage was recorded at 95.5 ± 1.2% until the end of the experiment. The methane production rate was 0.28–0.30 L L−1 d−1 following the low hydrogen loading rate (1.2 ± 0.1 L L−1 d−1) applied to avoid acetate accumulation. Hydrogenotrophic methanogens, Methanobrevibacter sp., were identified at a proportion of 97.9% among the Archaea and 60% of the total population of the enriched culture. Moreover, homoacetogens (Sporomusa sp.) and acetate oxidizers (Proteiniphilum sp.) were also detected, indicating that a possible metabolic pathway for CH4 production from CO2 is via homoacetogenesis and syntrophic acetate oxidation, which kept the acetate concentration at a level of 143 ± 13 mg L−1. It was found that adding NaHCO3 was adequate to sustain the pH at 8.25. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Anaerobic Environmental Biotechnology and Sustainability II)
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15 pages, 2205 KiB  
Article
Treatment of a Food Industry Dye, Brilliant Blue, at Low Concentration Using a New Photocatalytic Configuration
by Fatine Drhimer, Maryem Rahmani, Boutaina Regraguy, Souad El Hajjaji, Jamal Mabrouki, Abdeltif Amrane, Florence Fourcade and Aymen Amine Assadi
Sustainability 2023, 15(7), 5788; https://doi.org/10.3390/su15075788 - 27 Mar 2023
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 1613
Abstract
Food coloring has become one of the main sources of water pollution. Brilliant blue (BB) is one of the dyes used in the food industry. Heterogeneous photocatalysis is increasingly used to decontaminate polluted water from food industries. The objective of this paper was [...] Read more.
Food coloring has become one of the main sources of water pollution. Brilliant blue (BB) is one of the dyes used in the food industry. Heterogeneous photocatalysis is increasingly used to decontaminate polluted water from food industries. The objective of this paper was to treat this pollution using a photoreactor at the laboratory (batch) and pilot scales. The photodegradation of the brilliant blue dye, chosen as a model of pollutant, was performed at room temperature in an aqueous solution of titanium dioxide supported on cellulosic paper in the presence of an external UV lamp. The surface morphology of this photoactive tissue was characterized by SEM and FTIR. The performances of two geometric configurations were examined (batch reactor and annular recirculation reactor) in accordance with degradation and pollutant mineralization. The performance of the photocatalytic system was optimized by a parametric study to improve the impact of the different parameters on the efficiency of the degradation process, namely the initial concentration of the pollutant, the TiO2 cycle, the pH of the solution with the recirculating reactor, and the flow rate. The results showed 98% degradation of brilliant blue at the laboratory scale and 93.3% and 75% at the pilot flow rates of 800 and 200 L·h−1, respectively. The supported semiconductor showed good photodegradation ability during BB decomposition, showing that photocatalysis is a promising technique for water purification. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Anaerobic Environmental Biotechnology and Sustainability II)
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11 pages, 1458 KiB  
Article
Upgrading Anaerobic Sludge Digestion by Using an Oil Refinery By-Product
by Mahsa Alimohammadi and Goksel N. Demirer
Sustainability 2022, 14(23), 15693; https://doi.org/10.3390/su142315693 - 25 Nov 2022
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1341
Abstract
Carbon-based conductive additives have been studied for their positive effects on anaerobic digestion (AD) using synthetic substrates, but their importance in wastewater sludge digestion has not been sufficiently explored. This research investigated and compared the effects of two conductive materials (graphene and petroleum [...] Read more.
Carbon-based conductive additives have been studied for their positive effects on anaerobic digestion (AD) using synthetic substrates, but their importance in wastewater sludge digestion has not been sufficiently explored. This research investigated and compared the effects of two conductive materials (graphene and petroleum coke) with and without trace metal supplementation. The results indicated that supplementing reactors with graphene and petroleum coke could significantly improve biogas production. The supplementation of 1 g/L petroleum coke and 2 g/L graphene, without trace metal addition, led to an increase in the biogas production by 19.10 ± 1.04% and 16.97 ± 5.00%, respectively. Thus, it can be concluded that petroleum coke, which is an oil refinery by-product, can be used to enhance biogas production in a similar way to other carbon-based conductive materials that are currently available on the market. Moreover, using petroleum coke and graphene, the average chemical oxygen demand (COD) removal was 42.84 ± 1.23% and 42.80 ± 0.45%, respectively, without the addition of trace metals. On the other hand, supplementation of the reactors with trace elements resulted in a COD removal of 34.65 ± 0.43% and 34.05 ± 0.45% using petroleum coke and graphene, respectively. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Anaerobic Environmental Biotechnology and Sustainability II)
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