Authors: Petronia Carillo Claudia Carotenuto Filomena Di Cristofaro Ioannis Kafantaris Carmine Lubritto Mario Minale Biagio Morrone Stefania Papa Pasqualina Woodrow
Publish Date: 2012/09/27
Volume: 39, Issue: 12, Pages: 10193-10200
Abstract
Buffalo dung is a lowcost substrate with plenty of carbohydrates an optimal carbon/nitrogen ratio and a rich microbial flora and could become a valuable source of biogas Therefore in the present study we compared the type and amount of specific eubacteria to the different configurations of pH temperature and thermal pretreatment after fermentation in batch reactors in order to understand the suitability of buffalo manure for hydrogen production The phylogenetic structure of the microbial community in fermentation samples was studied using denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis to generate fingerprints of 16S rRNA genes The sequences analysis revealed abundance of the phyla Bacteroidetes and Firmicutes and in particular of the order Clostridiales Very active hydrogen producing bacteria belonging to Clostridium cellulosi species were identified demonstrating the suitability of this substrate to produce hydrogen Moreover a large fraction of 16SrDNA amplicons could not be assigned to lower taxonomic ranks demonstrating that numerous microorganisms involved in anaerobic fermentation in digesters or bioreactors are still unclassified or unknownThe authors are grateful to Dr Giovanni Pontecorvo for helpful discussions and advice “La Valentinasrl” farm is acknowledged for the kind supply of the water buffaloes manure The Italian Ministry of Agricultural Forest and Food Politics MiPAAF is acknowledged for financial support under the project SOSPIRI DM 28378/7815/09
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