Anaerobic digestion and gasification of seaweed

The potential of algal biomass as a source of liquid and gaseous biofuels is a highly topical theme, with over 70 years of sometimes intensive research and considerable financial investment. A wide range of unit operations can be combined to produce algal biofuel, but as yet there is no successful commercial system producing such biofuel. This suggests that there are major technical and engineering difficulties to be resolved before economically viable algal biofuel production can be achieved. Both gasification and anaerobic digestion have been suggested as promising methods for exploiting bioenergy from biomass, and two major projects have been funded in the UK on the gasification and anaerobic digestion of seaweed, MacroBioCrude and SeaGas. This chapter discusses the use of gasification and anaerobic digestion of seaweed for the production of biofuel

Bio-composting oil palm waste for improvement of soil fertility

Sources of bio-compost as agro-industrial wastes includes wide range of oil palm wastes viz. waste, biomass, palm kernels, empty fruit bunch, mill effluent, trunk and frond compost. Various composting processes are summarized in brief with distinct reference of oil–palm composting covering aerated static pile, and co-composting with earthworms (vermicomposting). However, in-vessel composting and windrow composting has meritorious advantages in composting. This review article refers to various significant roles played by microorganisms associated. Noteworthy study of bio-compost applications and procedures are correspondingly glosses framework of ecological, economical and agro-ecosystemic benefits

COMPARATIVE STUDIES OF THE PHYSIOLOGY OF SAPROMYCES AND RELATED GENERA

In recent years increasing attention has been directed to nutritional and physiological charac-teristics as an aid in tracing phylogenetic relation-ships among aquatic phycomycetes; and as a result of this interest, reports on the physiology of the group have become increasingly numerous. An exception has been the leptomitales, on which the last report was made over a decade ago by Schade and Thimann (1940). Moreover, their work and that of their predecessors were con-cerned with only one family in the order, the leptomitaceae. As a result, very little, if any, data are available on the second important family in the leptomitales, the rhipidiaceae. Among the leptomitaceae, Leptomitus lacteu