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Abstract: The effects of inoculum and medium composition (i.e. potato dextrose broth as carbon source, soybean peptone, calcium carbonate, and metal ions) on pellet formation of Rhizopus oryzae ATCC 20344 have been studied. Metal ions were found to have a significant negative effect on pellet formation while soybean peptone had a positive effect. In addition, potato dextrose broth and calcium carbonate were beneficial to R. oryzae for growing small, smooth pellets during the culture. The study also demonstrated that an inoculum size of less than 1.5×109 spores/L had no significant influence on pellet formation although it had large impacts on pellet growth. Thus, a new approach to form pellets has been developed using only potato dextrose broth, soybean peptone, and calcium carbonate allowing for pellet size to be controlled by adjusting inoculum size and the concentrations of potato dextrose broth, soybean peptone, and calcium carbonate in the medium. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Effective dilute acid hydrolysis of dairy manure which contains roughly 12% hemicellulose on a dry matter basis can produce a variety of mono-sugars such as arabinose, xylose and galactose, as well as to further benefit utilization of cellulose in the manure. To enhance the effectiveness of this dilute acid hydrolysis, the effect of manure nitrogen content was studied because some reactions such as the browning reaction between amino acids and reducing sugars and acid–base reactions involving ammonia and acid interfere with the hydrolysis. Two dairy manure samples were used to study this nitrogen effect; the original manure and the pretreated manure derived from a solid/liquid separation pretreatment. The pretreated manure had a total nitrogen content of 1.3% dry matter (DM) while the original dairy manure had twice that amount with a total nitrogen content of 2.6% DM. Results found that the optimal conditions for hydrolysis of manure hemicellulose were 2 h reaction time, 1% sulfuric acid concentration, 135 °C, and 10% sample concentration using the pretreated dairy manure as raw material. Under these conditions the corresponding sugar yield from hemicellulose was 111% and sugar concentration in the solution reached 16.5 g/l. At the same time, the hydrolyzed solid had 43% DM of cellulose, which was much higher than both the original manure containing 22% and the pretreated manure with 32%. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Converting animal manure into value-added products provides a potential alternative for treatment and disposal of such materials. Lignocellulosics are a major component of animal manure and represent an undeveloped bioresource. In this work, a process was developed for hydrolyzing manure lignocellulosics into fermentable sugars. When raw dairy manure was pre-treated with 3% sulfuric acid at 110 °C for 1 h, hemicellulose was completely degraded into mainly arabinose, galactose and xylose. The pretreated materials were then treated with cellulolytic enzymes, Celluclast-1.5L and Novozyme-188, to hydrolyze the cellulose. The optimal enzyme loadings were identified as 13 FPU cellulase/g substrate and 5 IU β-glucosidase/g substrate. The optimal temperature and pH were determined to be 46 °C and 4.8, respectively. A substrate concentration of 50 g/l favored both glucose concentration (in hydrolysate) and glucose yield (based on per 100 g manure). It was also found that a reduced particle size of 590-μm resulted in a high glucose yield with further decreases in particle size not increasing the yield. For each particle size investigated, the addition of 2% tween-80 resulted in at least 20% improvement in glucose yield. The optimized hydrolysis process achieved a glucose yield of 11.32 g/100 g manure, which corresponded to about 40% cellulose conversion. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The objective of this study was to delineate the effects of different coffee processing residues on the anaerobic microbes and corresponding digestion performance. The results elucidated that mucilage-rich feed enhanced the accumulation of methanogens, which consequently led to better digestion performance of biogas production. Fifty percent more methane and up to 3 times more net energy (heat and electricity) output were achieved by the digestion of the mucilage-rich feed (M3). The microbial community and statistical analyses further elucidated that different residues in the feed had significant impact on microbial distribution and correspondingly influenced the digestion performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]