Effective bio-pretreatment of sawdust waste with a novel microbial consortium for enhanced biomethanation

Anaerobic digestion (AD) is considered an efficient cost-effective technology for sustainable biogas production from lignocellulosic wastes. A novel lignocellulosic degradation microbial consortium (LCDC) was isolated from rotten sawdust, and further used for sawdust pretreatment prior to AD. Results showed that pretreatment of sawdust for 10 days led to significant reduction in cellulose, hemicelluloses, and lignin contents by 37.5%, 39.6%, and 56.7%, respectively, with respect to the control. In addition, the pretreatment enhanced cumulative biogas yield, which reached its maximum value of 312.0 L kg (1) VS after 28 days of AD (25.6% higher than the corresponding control). Moreover, the maximum significant cumulative methane yield was recorded after 28 days of AD of the pretreated sawdust (155.2 L kg (1) VS), which represented 72.6% higher than the corresponding control. Significantly higher biomethane yield from sawdust pretreated with LCDC confirms that this process is more economical than the previous reports. (C) 2017 Published by Elsevier Ltd.