Functional microbes are at the core of the biological processes that convert waste into biogas in anaerobic digestion (AD) plants. Despite their importance, these microbes are not very well characterised. In this project, we will harness the power of cutting-edge metagenomic research to identify and isolate the microbes that are most important for efficient biogas production. This project is part of our core R&D work, which focuses on developing solutions for delivering these microbes to AD plants for maximum efficiency.
Objectives:
- Identify functional microbes residing in full-scale AD plants
- Isolate and culture relevant microbial strains
- Develop technologies for transfer of functional microbes
Activities:
- Run metagenomic sequencing of microbial samples from full-scale AD reactors
- Use our novel bioinformatics pipeline to identify functionally relevant microbes
- Culture 3-5 novel functional microbial strains
- Optimise microbial transfer methods in lab-scale trials
Outputs:
This project will generate important research resources, in particular a database of microbial profiles from different full-scale AD reactors, samples of isolated functionally relevant microbial strains, and technological know-how on microbial transfer technologies. These resources will be critical to our future R&D work on microbial optimisation of AD.
For more information on CreChar or to sign up to one of our trials contact alana.mcskimming@carbogenics.com
