Modeling microbial response to temperature changes in anaerobic digestion: a novel approach

Present work details the inclusion and evaluation of a new, multi-faceted temperature-dependent microbial growth-limiting function in an existing anaerobic digestion model. The function was developed to address flexibility issues related to simulating anaerobic digestion processes with changing temperatures. Finally, the goodness of the extended model was evaluated using monitoring and 16s rRNA gene sequencing data from a laboratory-scale continuous experiment. The newly extended model showed increased flexibility in the simulation of different microbial temperature-dependence profiles. This finding was also supported by the simulation of the experimental data, where the best results were achieved during the shift from the established temperature-effect profile to the novel one. In conclusion, the novel temperature-dependence function was found to produce superior simulations compared to conventional ones and might benefit other, currently used models as well.