Enhancing anaerobic digestion of vegetable waste and cellulose by bioaugmentation with rumen culture

Anaerobic digestion (AD) has been widely used to valorize food waste (FW) because of its ability to convert organic carbon into CH4 and CO2. Korean FW has a high content of fruits and vegetables, and efficient hydrolysis of less biodegradable fibers is critical for its complete stabilization by AD. This study examined the digestates from different anaerobic digesters, namely Rs, Rr, and Rm, as the inocula for the AD of vegetable waste (VW) and cellulose (CL): Rs inoculated with anaerobic sludge from an AD plant, Rr inoculated with rumen fluid, and Rm inoculated with anaerobic sludge and augmented with rumen fluid. A total of six conditions (3 inocula x 2 substrates) were tested in serial subcultures. Biogas yield was higher in the runs inoculated with Rm than in the other runs for both VW (up to 1.10 L/g VS added) and CL (up to 1.05 L/g VS added), and so was biogas production rate. The inocula had different microbial community structures, and both substrate type and inoculum source had a significant effect on the formation and development of microbial community structures in the subcultures. The overall results suggest that the bioaugmentation with rumen microbial consortium has good potential to enhance the anaerobic biodegradability of VW, and thereby can help more efficiently digest high fiber-content Korean FW.