Perspectives in anaerobic digestion of lipid-rich wastewater
Lipid-rich wastewaters are ideal sources for methane production, but lipids are generally separated and removed prior to anaerobic treatment to avoid sludge flotation and microbial inhibition. In this work, we review the major technological and microbiological advances in the anaerobic digestion (AD) of lipids, while highlighting the most important breakthroughs in the field and identifying the future perspectives. In the past decades, several treatment processes have been developed for lipidrich wastewaters, moving from the upflow granular sludge based reactor designs to anaerobic membrane bioreactors and in situ flotation based bioreactors all now commercially available. Knowledge on the complexity of microbial communities and microbial interactions has increased greatly, allowing a better interpretation of lipids anaerobic biodegradation. However, there are still knowledge gaps and bottlenecks in lipids AD that need to be overcome to improve industrial applications. A multi-faceted approach with industrial and academic partners will provide a unique strategy for future widespread usage of waste-lipids as valuable resource for AD. ; The authors acknowledge the funding from EPA Research (Ireland), the Irish Dairy Processing Technology Centre, The Irish Research Council (EBPS2012) and the Microbiology Society; the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) under the scope of the strategic funding of UID/BIO/04469/2013 unit and COMPETE 2020 (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-006684), of Project RECI/BBB-EBI/0179/2012 (FCOMP-01-0124-FEDER-027462), POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007679 (UID/CTM/50011/2013), and by BioTecNorte operation (NORTE-01-0145-FEDER-000004) funded by the European Regional Development Fund under the scope of Norte2020 - Programa Operacional Regional do Norte. The authors also acknowledge the financial support of the European Research Council under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP/2007-2013)/ERC Grant Agreement no. 323009 and the funding of ANII-Uruguay, UNESCO-IHE and LATU (Uruguay). ...