Cheese whey fermentation into volatile fatty acids in an anaerobic sequencing batch reactor

The present research explored the optimization of volatile fatty acids (VFA) production from cheese whey in an anaerobic sequencing batch reactor (AnSBR). For that purpose, changes of solid and hydraulic retention times (SRT and HRT) were applied. Moreover, the experiments were coupled to metagenomic analyses by 16S rRNA sequencing. The results showed an enhancement of the process effectiveness at longer SRT and shorter HRT. The degree of acidification (DA) improved from 0.73 to 0.83 when increasing the SRT from 5 to 15 days. It also increased from 0.79 to 0.83 when lowering the HRT from 3 to 1 day. The acidification yield (Y_VFA/S) improved from 0.78 to 0.87 and from 0.86 to 0.90 g COD-VFA g COD-Lactose^-1 when increasing the SRT from 5 to 15 days and decreasing the HRT from 3 to 1 day, respectively. Hydrolytic bacteria dominated the microbial community at the shortest SRT, although they were replaced by acidogenic bacteria at longer SRT.