Addition of microbial consortium to the rice straw biomethanization: effect on specific methanogenic activity, kinetic and bacterial community.

The biomethanization of lignocellulosic wastes remains an inefficient and complex process due to lignin structures that hinder the hydrolysis step, therefore, some treatments are required. This work describes the addition of an enriched microbial consortium in the biomethanization of rice straw. The experiment was carried out in lab batch reactors following two strategies: (i) pretreatment of rice straw for 48 h using the enriched microbial consortium (dilution 1:100), and (ii) addition of this enriched microbial consortium (dilution 1:100) directly to the anaerobic reactors (bioaugmentation).