Highly efficient methane generation from untreated microalgae biomass

BACKGROUND: The fact that microalgae perform very efficiently photosynthetic conversion of sunlight into chemical energy has moved them into the focus of regenerative fuel research. Especially, biogas generation via anaerobic digestion is economically attractive due to the comparably simple apparative process technology and the theoretical possibility of converting the entire algal biomass to biogas/methane. In the last 60 years, intensive research on biogas production from microalgae biomass has revealed the microalgae as a rather challenging substrate for anaerobic digestion due to its high cell wall recalcitrance and unfavorable protein content, which requires additional pretreatment and co-fermentation strategies for sufficient fermentation. However, sustainable fuel generation requires the avoidance of cost/energy intensive biomass pretreatments to achieve positive net-energy process balance. RESULTS: Cultivation of microalgae in replete and limited nitrogen culture media conditions has led to the formation of protein-rich and low protein biomass, respectively, with the last being especially optimal for continuous fermentation. Anaerobic digestion of nitrogen limited biomass (low-N BM) was characterized by a stable process with low levels of inhibitory substances and resulted in extraordinary high biogas, and subsequently methane productivity [750 ± 15 and 462 ± 9 mL(N) g(−1) volatile solids (VS) day(−1), respectively], thus corresponding to biomass-to-methane energy conversion efficiency of up to 84%. The microbial community structure within this highly efficient digester revealed a clear predominance of the phyla Bacteroidetes and the family Methanosaetaceae among the Bacteria and Archaea, respectively. The fermentation of replete nitrogen biomass (replete-N BM), on the contrary, was demonstrated to be less productive (131 ± 33 mL(N) CH(4) g(−1)VS day(−1)) and failed completely due to acidosis, caused through high ammonia/ammonium concentrations. The organization of the microbial community of the failed (replete-N) digester differed greatly compared to the stable low-N digester, presenting a clear shift to the phyla Firmicutes and Thermotogae, and the archaeal population shifted from acetoclastic to hydrogenotrophic methanogenesis. CONCLUSIONS: The present study underlines the importance of cultivation conditions and shows the practicability of microalgae biomass usage as mono-substrate for highly efficient continuous fermentation to methane without any pretreatment with almost maximum practically achievable energy conversion efficiency (biomass to methane). [Figure: see text] ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s13068-017-0871-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.