ORIGINAL RESEARCH
Characterizing Bacterial Consortia from
an Anaerobic Digester Treating Organic Waste
for Biogas Production
Rabia Liaquat1, Asif Jamal1, Isfahan Tauseef2, Zahid Qureshi3, Uzma Farooq4,
Muhammad Imran1, Muhammad Ishtiaq Ali1
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1Department of Microbiology, Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan
2Department of Microbiology, Hazara University KPK, Pakistan
3Department of Chemistry, Govt. College University Lahore, Pakistan
4Department of Plant Sciences, Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan
Submission date: 2015-08-06
Final revision date: 2015-09-08
Acceptance date: 2015-09-08
Online publication date: 2017-03-22
Publication date: 2017-03-22
Pol. J. Environ. Stud. 2017;26(2):709-716
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ABSTRACT
Microorganisms play a significant role in anaerobic digestion of organic matter in order to add up the
chemical substances in the ongoing biochemical process. The microbes are responsible for the efficient
breakdown of complex organic molecules through a series of biochemical reactions for methane production.
In the present study inoculums were collected from three different sources – a sewage sludge wastewater
treatment plant (SS), cow dung (CD), and an anaerobic reactor treating inoculum from organic matter (IOM)
– to evaluate their potential for anaerobic digestion of agricultural residues (AR) and fruit vegetable waste
(FVW) at mesophilic temperature (35ºC). The higher biogas production of 507 l/gVS was achieved for
a mixture of inoculums (SS+CD+IOM) in reactor 4 (R4), and biogas characterization by gas chromatography
(GC) reveals 67.7% of the methane content. The morphological, biochemical, and molecular techniques
were used to identify the microbial flora present in the high-yield reactor. The abundance of Bacillus,
clostridium, and Enterobacter spp were observed along with Methanomicrobia and Methanosarcina.
To get a high methane yield from organic waste it is necessary to maintain the equilibrium and availability
of efficient microbial communities like firmicutous, hydrogenotrophic, and acitoclatic methanogens.