Organic matter (OM) has been characterized using thermal analysis in O2 atmospheres, but it is not clear if OM can be characterized using slow thermal degradation in N2 atmospheres (STDN). This article presents a new method to estimate the behavior of OM in anaerobic environment. Seventeen different plants from Tai Lake (Ch: Taihu), China were heated to 600 °C at a rate of 10 °C min(-1) in a N2...

Live attenuated strains of Salmonella typhimurium have been extensively investigated as vaccines for a number of infectious diseases. However, there is still little information available concerning aspects of their metabolism. S. typhimurium and Escherichia coli show a high degree of similarity in terms of their genome contents and metabolic networks. However, this work presents experimental ev...

One hundred eighty four strains belonging to the species Lactobacillus casei, L. paracasei and L. rhamnosus were screened for their ability to grow under aerobic conditions, in media containing heme and menaquinone and/or compounds generating reactive oxygen species (ROS), in order to identify respiratory and oxygen-tolerant phenotypes. Most strains were able to cope with aerobic conditions and...

The optimization of full-scale biogas plant operation is of great importance to make biomass a competitive source of renewable energy. The implementation of innovative control and optimization algorithms, such as Nonlinear Model Predictive Control, requires an online estimation of operating states of biogas plants. This state estimation allows for optimal control and operating decisions accordi...

Lignocellulosic biomass is one of the most abundant yet underutilized renewable energy resources. Both anaerobic digestion (AD) and hydrothermal carbonization (HTC) are promising technologies for bioenergy production from biomass in terms of biogas and HTC biochar, respectively. In this study, the combination of AD and HTC is proposed to increase overall bioenergy production. Wheat straw was an...

Seaweed is a highly attractive marine crop for the production of biofuels, due to its rapid growth rate as well as high polysaccharide and low lignin content. One appealing exploitation route is the production of biogas by anaerobic digestion. Interestingly, despite the compositional differences between seaweed and lignocellulosic biomass, available data indicate that conditions and inocula tra...

Pyruvate kinase is one of the three rate-limiting glycolytic enzymes that catalyze the last step of glycolysis, conversion of phosphoenolpyruvate (PEP) into pyruvate, which is associated with ATP generation. Two isozymes of pyruvate kinase, PykF and PykA, are identified in Escherichia coli PykF is considered important, whereas PykA has a less-defined role. Prior studies inactivated the pykA gen...

Physiological effects of carbon dioxide and impact on genome-wide transcript profiles were analysed in chemostat cultures of Saccharomyces cerevisiae. In anaerobic, glucose-limited chemostat cultures grown at atmospheric pressure, cultivation under CO(2)-saturated conditions had only a marginal (<10%) impact on the biomass yield. Conversely, a 25% decrease of the biomass yield was found in aero...

−− A steady state model of an anaerobic methanogenic biofilm reactor-module that accounts for the biological interactions of four microbial groups, ionic equilibrium in solution, gas-liquid transfer phenomena and biofilm processes is presented. The model consists of a continuous stirred tank reactor type that allocates an inert support material, whose specific surface is taken into account. The...

Anaerobic dechlorination of pentachlorophenol (PCP) was studied in two upflow anaerobic sludge blanket reactors. One reactor received glucose (0.9 g liter-1) as an additional carbon source; the other one served as a control. The concentration of PCP in the medium was 4.5 and 3.0 mg liter-1 in the experimental and control reactors, respectively. The reactors were inoculated with granular sludge ...