Sadržaj

<p>A redundancy analysis (RDA) biplot based on total OTUs (97% sequence similarity as the cutoff value) for samples collected from five locations with (a) environmental parameters and (b) metals as explanatory variables. *<i>p</i> < 0.05.</p

Bioenergy Technologies for a Net Zero Transition:Outcomes of UK-India Bioenergy Research Scoping

The report is part of scoping exercise led by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI)’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) and commissioned to Supergen Bioenergy Hub. The report is for UKRI, funded by UKRI India. UKRI launched in April 2018. UKRI is a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS). Our organisation brings together the seven disciplinary research councils, Research England, which is responsible for supporting research and knowledge exchange at higher education institutions in England, and the UK’s innovation agency, Innovate UK. Our nine councils work together in innovative ways to deliver an ambitious agenda, drawing on our great depth and breadth of expertise and the enormous diversity of our portfolio. http://www.ukri.org UKRI India plays a key role in enhancing the research and innovation collaboration between the UK and India. Since 2008, the UK and Indian governments, and third parties, have together invested over £330 million in co-funded research and innovation programmes. This investment has brought about more than 258 individual projects. The projects were funded by over 15 funding agencies, bringing together more than 220 lead institutions from the UK and India. These research projects have generated more than £450 million in further funding, mainly from public bodies but also from non-profit organisations and commercial entities, attesting the relevance of these projects. www.ukri.org/india This work was commissioned to inform UKRI/UKRI India priorities and pathways for innovation development in bioenergy with UK-India partnerships

Pretreatment of milled and unchopped sugarcane bagasse with vortex based hydrodynamic cavitation for enhanced biogas production

Anaerobic digestion can potentially valorise sugarcane bagasse to biogas and fertiliser. Pretreatment is however required to overcome recalcitrance and enhance the biogas yields. Literature reporting the investigation of various biomass pretreatments often use milled biomass as substrate rather than as-received fibrous biomass. This does not establish the true influence of the pretreatment type on biogas generation. Additionally, milling energy is also ignored when calculating net energy gains from enhanced biogas yields and are thus misleading. In this work, a vortex-based hydrodynamic cavitation device was used to enhance the biomethane yields from fibrous as-received biomass for the first time. Clear justification on why milled biomass must not be used as substrates for demonstrating the effect of pretreatment on biogas production is also discussed. The net energy gain from milled hydrodynamic cavitation pre-treated bagasse can be similar to as-received bagasse only when the specific milling energy is ≤700 kWh/ton.</p

Pre-treatment of distillery spent wash (vinasse) with vortex based cavitation and its influence on biogas generation

Distilleries generate high COD (chemical oxygen demand) wastewater streams that are anaerobically digested to produce biogas with sub-optimal yields. In this work, for the first time, novel vortex-based hydrodynamic cavitation (HC) pre-treatment of these waste streams was investigated for significantly enhancing biogas yields. Molasses spent wash (120,000 ppm COD, India) and vinasse (27,000 ppm COD, Brazil) were pre-treated at varying number of passes (between 1 and 20) through the HC device at constant inflow, biochemical methanation potential (BMP) was measured and described using a first order model. Vortex-based HC pre-treatment led to 14% enhancement (2 passes) in BMP from spent wash (difficult to digest compared to vinasse) with a net energy gain of 1 GJ/ton COD. 10–22% increase in biogas yields from large-scale industrial spent wash digesters confirmed the laboratory findings. The work presented is useful and can be translated to recalcitrant feedstock for enhancing valorization using vortex-based HC pre-treatment

ANN based modelling of hydrodynamic cavitation processes: Biomass pre-treatment and wastewater treatment

We have developed artificial neural network (ANN) based models for simulating two application examples of hydrodynamic cavitation (HC) namely, biomass pre-treatment to enhance biogas and degradation of organic pollutants in water. The first case reports data on influence of number of passes through HC reactor on biomethane generation from bagasse. The second case reports data on influence of HC reactor scale on degradation of dichloroaniline (DCA). Similar to most of the HC based applications, the availability of experimental data for these two applications is rather limited. In this work a systematic methodology for developing ANN model is presented. The models were shown to describe the experimental data very well. The ANN models were then evaluated for their ability to interpolate and extrapolate. Despite the limited data, the ANN models were able to simulate and interpolate the data for two very different and complex HC applications very well. The extrapolated results of biomethane generation in terms of number of passes were consistent with the intuitive understanding. The extrapolated results in terms of elapsed time were however not consistent with the intuitive understanding. The ANN model was able to generate intuitively consistent extrapolated results for degradation of DCA in terms of number of passes as well as scale of HC reactor. The results will be useful for developing quantitative models of complex HC applications

UPGMA clustering of the methanogenic community structures for samples collected from the five locations in Singapore based on total OTUs at the genus level (89% sequence similarity as the cutoff value).

<p>Data were square root transformed and the Bray-Curtis similarity was used for clustering analysis.</p

The sequencing statistics and diversity estimates for the samples collected from the different locations in this study.

<p>The sequencing statistics and diversity estimates for the samples collected from the different locations in this study.</p

The five mangrove sampling stations located along the Singapore coastline.

<p>Fig 1 was modified from a free picture from Wikipedia. Wikipedia has a free license "Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. Subject to disclaimers".</p

Neighbor-joining phylogenetic tree illustrating the 50 most abundant OTUs (with 97% sequence similarity as the cutoff value) among all the samples collected from the five locations in Singapore.

<p>A bootstrap value greater than 50% is shown (calculated 1,000 times). The color scale indicates the OTU distribution in the different locations.</p

Rarefaction curves for the <i>mcrA</i> gene sequences obtained by amplicon pyrosequencing from samples collected from the five locations in Singapore with 97% sequence similarity as the cutoff value.

<p>Rarefaction curves for the <i>mcrA</i> gene sequences obtained by amplicon pyrosequencing from samples collected from the five locations in Singapore with 97% sequence similarity as the cutoff value.</p