Comparison of microbial consortia in refuse-derived fuel (RDF) preparations between Japan and Germany

Refuse-derived fuels (RDF) pellets manufactured in Japan have been reported to contain a relatively high number of viable bacterial cells, and these bacteria generated a large amount of hydrogen gas during fermentation under wet conditions. In this study, we compared hydrogen gas generation from RDF pellets manufactured in Japan and in Germany and found that a large amount of hydrogen gas was generated from the Japanese RDF pellets but not from the German ones. This difference can be explained by the absence and presence of a biodegradation process before molding of raw garbage into RDF pellets. That is, the German process includes a biodegradation (or biological drying) process with forced aeration for a week, and this appears to reduce BOD in the garbage. Denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis analysis of 16S rRNA gene followed by DNA sequencing indicated that microbiotas of the RDF pellets manufactured in Japan and in Germany were very different.