Fungal pretreatment of willow sawdust and its combination with alkaline treatment for enhancing biogas production

Fungal Pretreatment of Willow Sawdust with Abortiporus biennis for Anaerobic Digestion: Impact of an External Nitrogen Source

“…WSD used in this study was collected in the region of Athens, Greece and the procedure of milling, sieving, and air drying that was followed is described in Alexandropoulou et al [6]. The main characteristics of the substrate used are presented in Table 1.…”

“…biennis strain BRFM 1215 was kindly provided by the CIRM-CF fungal collection (Banque de Ressources Fongiques de Marseille) on malt agar slants and were maintained at 4 • C. Inoculation cultures were prepared as described in Alexandropoulou et al [6] and the concentration of total suspended solids (TSS) and volatile suspended solids (VSS) of the fungal suspensions were 3.32 ± 0.01 and 3.26 ± 0.01 g/L, respectively.…”

“…Seven sets of 10 identical SSF batch cultures were prepared with 6 g sterilized air-dried WSD in 250 mL Erlenmeyer flasks, according to the protocol described in Alexandropoulou et al [6]. Briefly, 8 mL of mycelia suspension were aseptically inoculated in the flasks, where sterilized deionized water was also added, in order to achieve 80% humidity.…”

“…BMP experiments were carried out in duplicate at 35 • C in serum bottles of 160 mL, according to the modified protocol of Owen and Chynoweth [19] as described in Alexandropoulou et al [6]. Anaerobic sludge from the anaerobic digester of the Metamorphosis, Athens wastewater treatment plant, operating at steady state at an hydraulic retention time of 15 day, was used as inoculum.…”

“…In addition, the effect of these parameters on the BMP of fungi-pre-treated WSD is studied for the first time. Finally, the combination of fungal pre-treatment with alkali pre-treatment was studied and its effect on the lignocellulosic content and AD efficiency of WSD was also evaluated since, in our previous study, such a combination of pretreatment methods led to a 115% increase of the BMP when compared with the BMP of the raw untreated substrate [6].…”