Opening a functional genomic window on anaerobic wastewater digestion processes at municipal scales

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Anaerobic digestion of wastewater is catalyzed by microbial community metabolism resulting in theconversion of solid and dissolved wastes into potentially useful products including methane (CH4), also knownas biogas, a high-value and renewable energy and material resource. Commercial-scale anaerobic digesters,unfortunately, suffer from low conversion efficiencies, variability in CH4 yields and solid residues that can becostly to remove. These limitations confound profitability and arise primarily from limitations in currentcapacity to control microbial metabolic fluxes in the digester milieu. Recent advances in high-throughputsequencing technologies are enabling unprecedented access to the genetic blueprints underlying microbialmetabolism at the individual, population and community levels in wastewater treatment ecosystems. Initialinvestigations have identified direct links between physical and chemical parameters including loading rates,substrate types, residence times, temperature, and metal concentrations, and microbial community structure andfunction. However, effective management and optimization strategies require time-resolved insight into therelationships between operating parameters, performance metrics, and microbial community metabolism. Inpartnership with Metro Vancouver, we will develop this insight through time-series analysis of the anaerobicdigester and solids contact tank at the Lulu Island wastewater treatment plant in Richmond, BC usinghigh-throughput sequencing approaches. Resulting multi-omic (DNA and RNA) data sets will be used toprofile microbial community structure and activity, and model metabolic potential. This information will becombined with operating parameters and performance metrics to promote process configurations that increaseCH4 yields with reduced solids. Metro Vancouver is investing over $1 million CAD in a pilot plant as well as$13 Million CAD into a plant upgrade to feed CH4 from the anaerobic digester into a natural gas distributionfacility. The current project is integral to maximizing return on this investment by providing the data necessaryto model and manipulate underlying microbial interactions driving CH4 production at Lulu Island.