TY - GEN A1 - Otto, Pascal A1 - Alipoursarbani, Mozhdeh A1 - Torrent, Daniel A1 - Latorre-Pérez, Adriel A1 - Paust, Thomas A1 - Albert, Alfred A1 - Abendroth, Christian T1 - Microbiome Characterization after Aerobic Digestate Reactivation of Anaerobically Digested Sewage Sludge T2 - Fermentation N2 - A demonstrator plant of a recently patented process for improved sludge degradation has been implemented on a municipal scale. In a 1500 m3 sewage sludge digester, an intermediary stage with aerobic sewage sludge reactivation was implemented. This oxic activation increased the biogas yield by up to 55% with a 25% reduction of the remaining fermentation residue volume. Furthermore, this process allowed an NH4-N removal of over 90%. Additionally, 16S rRNA gene amplicon high-throughput sequencing of the reactivated digestate showed a reduced number of methane-forming archaea compared to the main digester. Multiple ammonium-oxidizing bacteria were detected. This includes multiple genera belonging to the family Chitinophagaceae (the highest values reached 18.8% of the DNA sequences) as well as a small amount of the genus Candidatus nitrosoglobus (<0.3%). In summary, the process described here provides an economically viable method to eliminate nitrogen from sewage sludge while achieving higher biogas yields and fewer potential pathogens in the residuals. KW - anaerobic digestion KW - anaerobic microbiomes KW - aerobic sludge activation KW - 16S rRNA sequencing KW - water treatment Y1 - 2023 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3390/fermentation9050471 SN - 2311-5637 VL - 9 IS - 5 ER -