Enhanced Resistance and Resilience of Anaerobic Digestion Microbiome after Single and Dual Short-Term Disturbances

Anaerobic digesters are often operated at high solids retention times (SRTs) of 20 d or longer to alleviate the effect of accidental substrate overloading. This study explores the potential of using pulse disturbances to prime the anaerobic digestion (AD) microbiome at a shorter SRT of 5 days by subjecting the digesters to single and dual short-term disturbances in the form of sudden reduction in SRT from 15 d to 5 d. Our findings suggest that strategic disturbances increased the resilience of the AD microbial community and facilitated a faster recovery of process performance during sustained disturbance periods at low SRT.