Organic loading rate: A promising microbial management tool in anaerobic digestion

What is it about?

Anaerobic digestion is a technology where microorganisms are used to convert waste into methane (natural gas) which can be used as a fuel. Anaerobic digesters often crash (become unstable), in this piece of research we showed that if you exposed the digester to stress you could produce a microbial community that would recover from stress faster in the future.

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Why is it important?

Anaerobic digestion is a microbial technology, however most of the optimization of it relies on engineering solutions. We demonstrated the value in understanding the microorganisms at the heart of the process. This is an exciting time to be a microbiologist, DNA sequencing has revolutionized our understanding of microbial communities. This research shows how this can be applied in the real word.