Anaerobic gut fungi and tiny red crystals – the glamour of increasing biogas yields

Two research papers have been published this week on how to improve biogas production. 

The first considers the glamourous world of herbivore anaerobic gut fungi. Harper Adams and the University of California have been studying the fungi with a view to establishing a “straight-forward platform, mimicking the conversion of plant biomass to useful products in nature”. Further details on this exciting project can be found here.

In a completely different way of looking at the same problem, the University of New South Wales in Australia has proposed “the addition of small amounts of a synthetic dye that forms previously unobserved needle-like crystals to help the methane-producing microbes grow faster”. All the details on this can be found here. 

These fascinating projects can support the long-term need of the AD industry to produce more methane in shorter timeframes, so are much-needed.

I'm sure they'll be items for discussion at the R&I Forum in April. Session 2 of the first day is on “Process improvement: can research increase biogas yields by 30%?”, so this research couldn't be more timely.