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Fermentation
Special Issues
Recent Advances in Anaerobic-Digestion-Based Biorefinery
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Recent Advances in Anaerobic-Digestion-Based Biorefinery

A special issue of Fermentation (ISSN 2311-5637). This special issue belongs to the section "Industrial Fermentation".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 April 2026 | Viewed by 1407

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Ying Xu

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
State Key Laboratory of Pollution Control and Resource Reuse, School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Tongji University, Shanghai 200092, China
Interests: environmental biophysics; bioenergy; electron transfer; water-mediated proton transfer; organic wastes; sewage sludge

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Anaerobic digestion is a negative-carbon method that could contribute to achieving global sustainable development goals, as it can reduce pollution while recycling energy and high-value-added products (e.g., lactic acid, volatile fatty acids, and biostimulants). However, the physicochemical properties of different substrates significantly affect their anaerobic digestion performance. For example, anaerobic digestion of wastewater has undergone obvious progress and is more efficient than that of organic solid wastes, which makes the universal application of anaerobic digestion challenging. In particular, its long reaction period, low methane yield, low organic degradation rate, poor stability and undesirable byproducts greatly limit the applicability of anaerobic digestion to organic solid wastes. The general understanding of anaerobic digestion in solid-state (e.g., organic solid wastes) and liquid-state (e.g., wastewater) substrates needs to be further improved.

This Special Issue aims to collect high-quality papers in all fields of anaerobic digestion, including that of organic solid wastes and wastewater. We encourage researchers from related fields to contribute review and research papers highlighting the advances in anaerobic digestion research.

Dr. Ying Xu
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Fermentation is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2100 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • anaerobic fermentation
  • biohydrogen
  • methane production
  • organic wastes
  • microbial metabolism
  • microbiomics analysis
  • high-value-added products
  • anaerobic biotransformation
  • biotechnology

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

17 pages, 4246 KB  
Article
Dual Reinforcement of Biohydrogen Production from Food Waste Dark Fermentation by Thermal–Alkaline Pretreatment Coupled with Nickel-Based Nanoparticles
by Yu-Ting Zhang, Xiaona An, Jingyu Hao, Xiaohu Dai and Ying Xu
Fermentation 2025, 11(12), 658; https://doi.org/10.3390/fermentation11120658 - 24 Nov 2025
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1047
Abstract
Dark fermentation of food waste for biohydrogen production can simultaneously achieve waste resource utilization and clean energy production. However, the widespread application of this technology remains constrained by challenges such as low substrate hydrolysis efficiency and suboptimal metabolic performance of functional microorganisms. This [...] Read more.
Dark fermentation of food waste for biohydrogen production can simultaneously achieve waste resource utilization and clean energy production. However, the widespread application of this technology remains constrained by challenges such as low substrate hydrolysis efficiency and suboptimal metabolic performance of functional microorganisms. This study evaluated the synergistic enhancement of biohydrogen production from food waste through dark fermentation by integrating thermal–alkaline (TA) pretreatment with varying concentrations (50, 100, 150, and 200 mg/L) of nickel–cobalt oxide nanoparticles (NiCo2O4 NPs), and the underlying mechanisms involved were systematically elucidated. The results demonstrated that individual TA pretreatment (pH 11, 70 °C, 1 h) and TA coupled with NiCo2O4 NPs (100 mg/L) significantly (p < 0.01) enhanced the cumulative biohydrogen yields of the food waste dark fermentation by 20.89% and 35.76%, respectively. Mechanism research revealed that TA pretreatment effectively facilitated the dissolution and hydrolysis of macro-molecular organics such as polysaccharides and proteins, thereby enhancing the bio-accessibility of fermentation substrates. The introduction of NiCo2O4 NPs further intensified the microbial biohydrogen-producing metabolism by augmenting enzymatic activity and enriching functional bacteria. NiCo2O4 NPs significantly (p < 0.001) enhanced the overall activity of hydrogenase by 95.10% compared to the control group (CG) by providing the cofactor of hydrogenase and accelerating electron transfer. Additionally, this synergistic strategy significantly (p < 0.01) increased the activities of hydrolases (e.g., protease and α-glucosidase), as well as key enzymes in acetate-type and butyrate-type fermentation pathways (e.g., acetate kinase and butyrate kinase), and enriched the biohydrogen-producing microbial community centered on Clostridium_sensu_stricto_1. This study systematically elucidated the synergistic strategy of TA pretreatment and NiCo2O4 NPs, which achieved dual-pathway reinforcement from substrate degradability to microbial metabolic activity. The findings are expected to provide theoretical support for developing efficient biohydrogen production technology from perishable organic solid waste. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Recent Advances in Anaerobic-Digestion-Based Biorefinery)
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