Impact of the substrate loading regime and phosphoric acid supplementation on performance of biogas reactors and microbial community dynamics during anaerobic digestion of chicken wastes

This study evaluates the effects of increasing organic loading rate (OLR) and decreasing hydraulic retention time (HRT) as well as phosphoric acid addition on mesophilic reactors' performance and biogas production from chicken wastes. Furthermore, microbial community composition in reactors was characterized by a 16S rRNA gene-based pyrosequencing analysis. Each step of increasing OLR impacted on the activity of microorganisms what caused a temporary decrease in biogas production. The addition of phosphoric acid resulted in the increased biogas production with values between 361 and 447 mL gVS−1 from day 61 to day 74 compared to control reactor (309-350 mL gVS−1). With reactors' operation, Bacteroidetes phylotypes were noticeably replaced with Firmicutes representatives, and significant increase of Clostridium sp. was identified. Within Euryarchaeota, Methanosarcina sp. dominated in all analyzed samples, in which high ammonium levels were detected (3.4-4.9 NH4+-N g L−1). These results can help in better understanding the anaerobic digestion process of simultaneously ammonium/phosphate-rich substrates.