Energy and nutrient recovery from municipal and industrial waste and wastewater-a perspective.

Unlabelled: This publication highlights the latest advancements in the field of energy and nutrient recovery from organics rich municipal and industrial waste and wastewater. Energy and carbon rich waste streams are multifaceted, including municipal solid waste, industrial waste, agricultural by-products and residues, beached or residual seaweed biomass from post-harvest processing, and food waste, and are valuable resources to overcome current limitations with sustainable feedstock supply chains for biorefining approaches. The emphasis will be on the most recent scientific progress in the area, including the development of new and innovative technologies, such as microbial processes and the role of biofilms for the degradation of organic pollutants in wastewater, as well as the production of biofuels and value-added products from organic waste and wastewater streams.

Microbial communities for valorizing biomass using the carboxylate platform to produce volatile fatty acids: A review.

The carboxylate platform employs a diverse microbial consortium of anaerobes in which the methanogens are inhibited. Nearly all biomass components are digested to a mixture of C1-C8 monocarboxylic acids and their corresponding salts. The methane-arrested anaerobic digestion proceeds readily without needing to sterilize biomass or equipment.

Effect of thermochemical pretreatment on sewage sludge and its impact on carboxylic acids production.

This paper investigates the potential of converting sewage sludge into a useful product, namely carboxylic acids. To potentially enhance acid yields, the effect of pretreatment using 0.3 g lime/g dry biomass and water at 100 degrees C for 10-240 min was studied.

Multiple linear regression model for predicting biomass digestibility from structural features.

A total of 147 model lignocellulose samples with a broad spectrum of structural features (lignin contents, acetyl contents, and crystallinity indices) were hydrolyzed with a wide range of cellulase loadings during 1-, 6-, and 72-h hydrolysis periods. Carbohydrate conversions at 1, 6, and 72 h were linearly proportional to the logarithm of cellulase loadings from approximately 10% to 90% conversion, indicating that the simplified HCH-1 model is valid for predicting lignocellulose digestibility. The HCH-1 model is a modified Michaelis-Menton model that accounts for the fraction of insoluble substrate available to bind with enzyme.

Lime pretreatment.

Lime pretreatment has proven to be a useful method for selectively reducing the lignin content of lignocellulosic biomass without significant loss in carbohydrates, thus realizing an important increase in biodigestibility. In lime pretreatment, the biomass is pretreated with calcium hydroxide and water under different conditions of temperature and pressure. It can be accomplished in one of three fashions: (1) short-term pretreatment that lasts up to 6 h, requires temperatures of 100-160 degrees C, and can be applied with or without oxygen (pressure approximately 200 psig); (2) long-term pretreatment taking up to 8 weeks, requiring only 55-65 degrees C, and capable of running with or without air (atmospheric pressure); and (3) simple pretreatment requiring 1 h in boiling water, without air or oxygen.

Short-term lime pretreatment of poplar wood.

Short-term lime pretreatment uses lime and high-pressure oxygen to significantly increase the digestibility of poplar wood. When the treated poplar wood was enzymatically hydrolyzed, glucan and xylan were converted to glucose and xylose, respectively. To calculate product yields from raw biomass, these sugars were expressed as equivalent glucan and xylan.

Carboxylate platform: the MixAlco process part 2: process economics.

The MixAlco process employs a mixed culture of acid-forming microorganisms to convert biomass to carboxylate salts, which are concentrated via vapor-compression evaporation and subsequently chemically converted to other chemical and fuel products. To make alcohols, hydrogen is required, which can be supplied from a number of processes, including gasifying biomass, separation from fermentor gases, methane reforming, or electrolysis. Using zeolite catalysts, the alcohols can be oligomerized into hydrocarbons, such as gasoline.

Carboxylate platform: the MixAlco process part 1: comparison of three biomass conversion platforms.

To convert biomass to liquid fuels, three platforms are compared: thermochemical, sugar, and carboxylate. To create a common basis, each platform is fed "ideal biomass," which contains polysaccharides (68.3%) and lignin (31.

Neural network prediction of biomass digestibility based on structural features.

Plots of biomass digestibility are linear with the natural logarithm of enzyme loading; the slope and intercept characterize biomass reactivity. The feed-forward back-propagation neural networks were performed to predict biomass digestibility by simulating the 1-, 6-, and 72-h slopes and intercepts of glucan, xylan, and total sugar hydrolyses of 147 poplar wood model samples with a variety of lignin contents, acetyl contents, and crystallinity indices. Regression analysis of the neural network models indicates that they performed satisfactorily.

Structural features affecting biomass enzymatic digestibility.

The rate and extent of enzymatic hydrolysis of lignocellulosic biomass highly depend on enzyme loadings, hydrolysis periods, and structural features resulting from pretreatments. Furthermore, the influence of one structural feature on biomass digestibility varies with the changes in enzyme loading, hydrolysis period and other structural features as well. In this paper, the effects of lignin content, acetyl content, and biomass crystallinity on the 1-, 6-, and 72-h digestibilities with various enzyme loadings were investigated.

Enzymatic hydrolysis of lime-pretreated corn stover and investigation of the HCH-1 Model: inhibition pattern, degree of inhibition, validity of simplified HCH-1 Model.

The inhibition pattern was identified for a reaction system composed of Trichoderma reesei cellulase enzyme complex and lime-pretreated corn stover. Also, the glucose inhibition effect was quantified for the aforementioned reaction system over a range of enzyme loadings and substrate concentrations. Lastly, the range of substrate concentrations and enzyme loadings were identified in which the linear form of the simplified HCH-1 Model is valid.

Suggested improvements to the standard filter paper assay used to measure cellulase activity.

Two suggestions can be found in the literature to improve the reproducibility of the Mandels' filter paper assay: add supplemental cellobiase and increase the boiling time for color development. Here we provide data that strongly supports adding supplemental cellobiase. Adding supplemental cellobiase increased assay response by 56%.