Corine Orline Nzeteu

• Ollscoil na Gaillimhe – University of Galway

Understanding microbial ecology through amplifying short read regions, typically 16S rRNA for prokaryotic species or 18S rRNA for eukaryotic species, remains a popular, economical choice. These methods provide relative abundances of key microbial taxa, which, depending on the experimental design, can be used to infer mechanistic ecological underpin...

The looming climate and energy crises, exacerbated by increased waste generation, are driving research and development of sustainable resource management systems. Research suggests that organic materials, such as food waste, grass, and manure, have potential for biotransformation into a range of products, including: high-value volatile fatty acids...

This study investigated the potential of granular activated carbon (GAC) supplementation to enhance anaerobic degradation of dairy wastewater. Two sequential batch reactors (SBR; 0.8 L working volume), one control and another amended with granular activated carbon, were operated at 37 oC and 1.5‐1.6 m/h upflow velocity for a total of 120 days (four...

Permanent grasslands (e.g., ryegrass and clovers) are an abundant and renewable feedstock that can be used for the sustainable production of biogas and short-chain carboxylic acids (SCCAs) using anaerobic digestion (AD) technology. Butyric acid, especially, is an important carboxylic acid that is mainly produced through the chemical synthesis of fo...

Medium chain carboxylic acids (MCCA), such as caproic acid, are high-value chemicals with many industrial applications. The development of a biological mixed culture chain elongation (CE) process, using waste-derived lactic acid offers an opportunity to sustainably produce MCCA, such as caproic acid. However, the nature of the biological conversion...

As the human population grows on the planet so does the generation of waste and particularly that of food waste. In order to tackle the world sustainability crisis, efforts to recover products from waste are critical. Here, we anaerobically recovered volatile fatty acids (VFAs) from food waste and analysed the microbial populations underpinning the...

Advances in null-model approaches have resulted in a deeper understanding of community assembly mechanisms for a variety of complex microbiomes. One under-explored application is assembly of communities from the built-environment, especially during process disturbances. Anaerobic digestion for biological wastewater treatment is often underpinned by...

Contribution to the International Chain Elongation Conference 2020 | ICEC 2020. An abstract can be found in the right column.

The effect of co-digesting cattle slurry and grass silage for VFA production was investigated in batch bottles.

Methanogenic sludge granules are densely packed, small, spherical biofilms found in anaerobic digesters used to treat industrial wastewaters, where they underpin efficient organic waste conversion and biogas production. Each granule theoretically houses representative microorganisms from all of the trophic groups implicated in the successive and in...

Methanogenic sludge granules are densely packed, small (diameter, approx. 0.5-2.0 mm) spherical biofilms found in anaerobic digesters used to treat industrial wastewaters, where they underpin efficient organic waste conversion and biogas production. A single digester contains millions of individual granules, each of which is a highly-organised biof...

Background Nowadays, the vast majority of chemicals are either synthesised from fossil fuels or are extracted from agricultural commodities. However, these production approaches are not environmentally and economically sustainable, as they result in the emission of greenhouse gases and they may also compete with food production. Because of the glob...

Summary of bioreactor R1, R2, and R3 operational performance.

Proteins identified in the 12 samples analyzed. Each technical replicates were combined to give a composite list for each of the triplicate bioreactor fractions: R1, R2, and R3 correspond to bioreactors 1, 2, and 3 and G and L stands for grass biofilm and leachate samples. Name, phylogenetic assignment (class and lowest common ancestor), COG catego...

Overview of the metabolic pathways occurring at the time of sampling in the triplicate bioreactors (R1, R2, and R3). Red lines indicate reactions catalyzed by enzymes detected in the present study.

Summary of number of MS/MS acquired, MS/MS assigned to peptides and number of distinct peptides for each sample.

Harvesting valuable bioproducts from various renewable feedstocks is necessary for the critical development of a sustainable bioeconomy. Anaerobic digestion is a well-established technology for the conversion of wastewater and solid feedstocks to energy with the additional potential for production of process intermediates of high market values (e.g...