• Energy Research
• 2021-2025close

As a clean and renewable energy, biogas is an important alternative to fossil fuels. However, the high carbon dioxide (CO2) content in biogas limits its value as a fuel. 'Biogas upgrading' is an advanced process which removes CO2 from biogas, thereby converting biogas to biomethane, which has a higher commercial value. Microbial technologies offer a sustainable and cost-effective way to upgrade biogas, removing CO2 using hydrogen (H2) as electron donor, generated by surplus electricity from renewable wind or solar energy. Hydrogenotrophic methanogens can be applied to convert CO2 with H2 to methane (CH4), or alternatively, homoacetogens can convert both CO2 and H2 into value-added chemicals. Here, we comprehensively review the current state of biogas generation and utilization, and describe the advances in biological, H2-dependent biogas upgrading technologies, with particular attention to key challenges associated with the processes, e.g., metabolic limitations, low H2 transfer rate, and finite CO2 conversion rate. We also highlight several new strategies for overcoming technical barriers to achieve efficient CO2 conversion, including process optimization to eliminate metabolic limitation, novel reactor designs to improve H2 transfer rate and utilization efficiency, and employing advanced genetic engineering tools to generate more efficient microorganisms. The insights offered in this review will promote further exploration into microbial, H2-driven biogas upgrading, towards addressing the global energy crisis and climate change associated with use of fossil fuels.

Opportunities, challenges and design criteria associated with Gas diffusion electrodes (GDEs) for various electrochemical applications.

Anaerobic oxidation of methane (AOM) is a crucial bioprocess in global methane mitigation. Adoption of AOM in an engineered system provides an opportunity for the development of methane-based biotechnologies.

Anaerobic digestion is a common stabilization method for treating primary sludge (PS) and waste activated sludge (WAS). However, its application is often limited by the degradation of WAS. Recent studies have demonstrated FNA to be an effective pre-treatment for enhancing WAS degradability, while having limited effect on PS degradability. WAS characteristics are impacted by wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) configuration and this study is the first to compare the effectiveness of FNA pre-treatment on WAS from WWTP with and without primary treatment. In this study, WAS samples were collected from four full-scale WWTPs with or without primary treatment. Sludge characterization, biomethane potential tests and mathematical modeling were conducted to assess the impacts of FNA pre-treatment on anaerobic digestion. The results showed that FNA pre-treatment was consistently effective for WAS from different WWTPs, while the extent of enhancement varied between WWTPs. For WAS from WWTPs without primary treatment, FNA pretreatment increased the rate of hydrolysis by 54-66% compared to 22-33% increase for WAS without primary treatment. In contrast, WAS from WWTPs with primary treatment experienced greater increases in methane potential (22-24%) compared to WAS from WWTPs without primary treatment (14-16%). These variances could be associated with primary treatment impacting the wastewater COD/N ratio and thus portion of extracellular polymetric substances (EPS) and cells in WAS. FNA pre-treatment targets the destruction of polymetric substances and cells, therefore WAS with a higher proportion of cells (i.e., WAS with primary treatment) experienced greater improvements in methane yield. Similarly, greater improvements in hydrolysis rate were observed for WAS from WWTP without primary sedimentation which contain higher proportions of large EPS molecules. Despite its consistent effectiveness on WAS samples, FNA pre-treatment was ineffective for improving the digestibility of high-rate activated sludge (HRAS).

The electrochemical CO2 reduction reaction (CO2RR), driven by renewable energy, provides a potential carbon‐neutral avenue to convert CO2 into valuable fuels and feedstocks. Conversion of CO2 into formic acid/formate is considered one of the economical and feasible methods, owing to their high energy densities, and ease of distribution and storage. The separation of formic acid/formate from the reaction mixtures accounts for the majority of the overall CO2RR process cost, while the increment of product concentration can lead to the reduction of separation cost, remarkably. In this paper, we give an overview of recent strategies for highly concentrated formic acid/formate products in CO2RR. CO2RR is a complex process with several different products, as it has different intermediates and reaction pathways. Therefore, this review focuses on recent study strategies that can enhance targeted formic acid/formate yield, such as the all‐solid‐state reactor design to deliver a high concentration of products during the reduction of CO2 in the electrolyzer. Firstly, some novel electrolyzers are introduced as an engineering strategy to improve the concentration of the formic acid/formate and reduce the cost of downstream separations. Also, the design of planar and gas diffusion electrodes (GDEs) with the potential to deliver high‐concentration formic acid/formate in CO2RR is summarized. Finally, the existing technological challenges are highlighted, and further research recommendations to achieve high‐concentration products in CO2RR. This review can provide some inspiration for future research to further improve the product concentration and economic benefits of CO2RR.

Iron salts (i.e. FeCl3) are the most used chemicals in the urban wastewater system. Iron is commonly dosed into sewage or the mainstream system, which provides multiple benefits such as enhanced phosphorus removal and improved sludge settleability/dewaterability. This study reported and demonstrated a new approach that dosed FeCl3 into returned sludge in order to bring two more benefits to wastewater management: short-cut nitrogen removal via the nitrite pathway and less biomass production. This approach is achieved based on our findings that with similar amount of FeCl3, centralized iron dosing into a sidestream sludge unit generated iron concentration two orders of magnitude higher than the common mainstream dosing (e.g. 10-40 mg Fe/L-wastewater), leading to sludge acidification (pH = 2.1) with Fe (III) hydrolysis. Together with accumulated nitrite in the supernatant of the sludge, ppm-level of free nitrous acid was generated and thus enabled sludge disintegration, cell lysis, and selective elimination of nitrite-oxidizing bacteria (NOB). Long-term effects on nitrifying bacteria and overall reactor performance were evaluated using two laboratory reactor experiments for over one year. The experimental reactor showed stable nitrite accumulation with an average NO2-/(NO2- + NO3-) ratio above 80% and ∼30% observed biomass yield reduction compared to those in control reactors. In addition, the centralized sludge dosing strategy still provided benefits such as improved settleability and dewaterability of sludge and enhanced phosphorus removal.

This study investigated biofilm establishment, biofilm structure, and microbial community composition of biofilms in three laboratory-scale moving bed biofilm reactors. These reactors were filled with three types of plastic carriers with varied depths of living space for microbial growth. The reactors were operated under the same influent and operational conditions. Along with the operation, the results showed that carriers with grids of 50 μm in height delayed the biofilm development and formed the thinnest biofilm and a carpet-like structure with the lowest α-diversity. In comparison, another two carriers with grids of 200 and 400 μm in height formed thick biofilms and large colonies with more voids and channels. Quantified properties of biofilm thickness, biomass, heterogeneity, portion of the biofilm exposed to the nutrient, and maximum diffusion distance were examined, and the results demonstrated that they almost (except for heterogeneity) strongly correlated to the α-diversity of microbial community. These illustrate that depth of living space, as an important parameter for carrier, could drive the formation of biofilm structure and community composition. It improves understanding of influencing factors on biofilm establishment, structure and its microbial community, and would be helpful for the design of biofilm processes.