Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jan 21, 2026

Novel Production Protocol for Small-scale Manufacture of Probiotic Fermented Foods
Published on: September 10, 2016
Metabolic analysis of efficient methane production from food waste with ethanol pre-fermentation using carbon isotope
Hui Zou1, Ming Gao2, Qunhui Wang3
1Department of Environmental Engineering, School of Energy and Environmental Engineering, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing 100083, PR China; Institute of Soil Environment and Pollution Remediation, Beijing Municipal Research Institute of Environmental Protection, Beijing 100037, PR China.
Abstract:
Anaerobic digestion (AD) has been widely applied as an economic option for food waste (FW) treatment. In this study, the group treated with ethanol pre-fermentation (EP) for 12 h (EP12) exhibited the highest cumulative biogas yield (206 mL/g-volatile solid) during AD process and therefore it was used to illuminate the underlying metabolic processes of AD with EP. Carbon isotope labeled glucose was supplemented to FW substrate, and the EP process was found to alleviate the acidification inhibition with conducting extremely high carbon flux towards ethanol formation (43.7%). Then an efficient acetogenesis phase was also observed in EP12 group, because of high carbon conversion rate from ethanol to acetate. Overall, higher carbon conversion rate to methane (90.1%) during methanogenesis was found in the AD system with EP than in the control experiment (80.3%). Thus, we quantitatively confirmed that EP affects the AD metabolism of FW in terms of carbon flow distribution.
Related Concept Videos
Fermentation
Fermentation is a type of metabolic process that occurs in the absence of oxygen, where organic molecules such as glucose are broken down to produce energy. During this process, the...
Isotopes
An element's atomic mass, or weight,...
Production Efficiency
Elements: Chemical Symbols and Isotopes
Some symbols are derived from the common English name of the element; others are abbreviations of the name in another language — Latin, Greek or German. For example, the symbol for aluminum (common name)...
Carbon Skeletons
What is Metabolism?

