Microbial Communities for Bioenergy Recovery from Wastes and Waste Streams

About this Research Topic

Background

In nature, microorganisms live in communities to efficiently utilize available resources. The benefits of cooperation in microbial communities exhibit advantages over monocultures in terms of stability, robustness, and functionality. Expanded metabolic capabilities in microbial communities arising from complex microbe-microbe interactions could be used for the biotransformation of inexpensive feedstocks available worldwide into a wide range of products or renewable energy. Bioenergy and biofuel production from waste and waste streams using microbial communities is considered as a sustainable approach since it contributes to reduced greenhouse gas emissions, lower dependence on fossil fuels, and sustainable waste management, and supports a transition towards implementation of a circular economy.

The Research Topic focuses on microbial communities in bioenergy and biofuel production from solid wastes or waste streams. The recent innovative technologies utilizing natural or synthetic microbial communities to produce liquid biofuels (microbial oils, ethanol, etc.), biogas, biohydrogen, and electricity will be considered. Emerging technologies integrating biotransformation with other processes (such as photocatalysis) to enhance biodegradability and energy recovery would be of special interest. Application of molecular technologies and computational tools to bring insights into complex microbe-microbe interactions and design more efficient bioprocesses, will be included.

The editorial team particularly welcomes Reviews and Original Research papers that deal with the use of microbial communities in sustainable biofuel and bioenergy production. Themes to be addressed in the Research Topic may include, but are not limited to, the following areas:

• Microbial technologies for energy recovery from emerging and persistent pollutants
• Microbial Electrochemical Technologies
• Anaerobic digestion
• Dark fermentation
• Synthetic microbial communities for biofuels and bioenergy (methane, hydrogen, microbial oils, electricity, etc.) production
• Microbial communities in integrated processes (bioprocesses coupled with photocatalysis, etc.)
• Renewable energy recovery from various agro-industrial wastes and waste streams
• Selection of microbial communities from various environments for bioenergy production
• Modelling and simulation of behavior and interactions in microbial communities

Keywords: Microbial Communities, Fermentation, Biodegradation, Biofuels, Bioenergy

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