Major
Environmental Science
Anticipated Graduation Year
2022
Access Type
Open Access
Abstract
Anaerobic digestion has the potential to eliminate the food waste Loyola’s Lake Shore Campus sends to off-site composting and landfills. This process utilizes a diverse microbial community to degrade organic waste. In small-scale (500mL) bioreactors, this microbial community began to optimize after being fed a consistent food type. Preliminary data suggest that this optimization results in higher methane content in biogas, which allows more energy to be recovered when burned. Changes to biogas production rate and composition are consistent with shifts in the microbial community, which will be explored in additional analyses by future Loyola researchers.
Faculty Mentors & Instructors
Gregory Palmer, PhD, School of Environmental Sustainability; Gajan Sivandran, PhD, Department of Engineering
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Optimizing Microbial Communities for Anaerobic Digestion
Anaerobic digestion has the potential to eliminate the food waste Loyola’s Lake Shore Campus sends to off-site composting and landfills. This process utilizes a diverse microbial community to degrade organic waste. In small-scale (500mL) bioreactors, this microbial community began to optimize after being fed a consistent food type. Preliminary data suggest that this optimization results in higher methane content in biogas, which allows more energy to be recovered when burned. Changes to biogas production rate and composition are consistent with shifts in the microbial community, which will be explored in additional analyses by future Loyola researchers.