PhD Studentship: Synthetic Microbial Communities for Anaerobic Digestion of Waste to Biogas

Background

Lignocellulosic plant biomass is the most abundant waste product generated by society, agriculture and industry. ... The aim of this project is to design and test synthetic microbial communities (SynComs) comprising anaerobic landfill microbiota for enhanced conversion of waste feedstocks into biogas.

The candidate will utilise a range of methods including anaerobic microbial culture, synthetic community design and assembly, operate batch and continuous culture reactors, biogas analysis, quantitative PCR, 16S rRNA gene community profiling, metagenomics and computational analyses to address the following research objectives:

1. Test the effects of inoculum size and mode of delivery on the establishment, stability and persistence of SynComs in anaerobic digestion processes.
2. Design and test SynComs for the bioconversion of diverse feedstock types.
3. Optimise minimal SynComs for waste biomass conversion to biogas.