View article

Nine anaerobic digesters, each seeded with biomass from a different source, were operated identically and their quasi steady state function was compared. Subsequently, digesters were bioaugmented with a methanogenic culture previously shown to increase specific methanogenic activity. Before bioaugmentation, different seed biomass resulted in different quasi steady state function, with digesters clustering into three groups distinguished by methane (CH₄) production. Digesters with similar functional performance contained similar archaeal communities based on clustering of Illumina sequence data of the V4single bondV5 region of the 16S rRNA gene. High CH₄ production correlated with neutral pH and high Methanosarcina abundance, whereas low CH₄ production correlated to low pH as well as high Methanobacterium and DHVEG 6 family abundance. After bioaugmentation, CH₄ production from the high …