The occurrence of anaerobic oxidation of methane (AOM) and trace methane oxidation (TMO) was investigated in a freshwater natural gas source. Sediment samples were taken and analyzed for potential electron acceptors coupled to AOM. Long-term incubations with 13C-labeled CH4 (13CH4) and different electron acceptors showed that both AOM and TMO occurred. In most conditions, 13C-labeled CO2 (13CO2) simultaneously increased with methane formation, which is typical for TMO. In the presence of nitrate, neither methane formation nor methane oxidation occurred. Net AOM was measured only with sulfate as electron acceptor. Here, sulfide production occurred simultaneously with 13CO2 production and no methanogenesis occurred, excluding TMO as a possible source for 13CO2 production from 13CH4. Archaeal 16S rRNA gene analysis showed the highest presence of ANME-2a/b (ANaerobic MEthane oxidizing archaea) and AAA (AOM Associated Archaea) sequences in the incubations with methane and sulfate as compared with only methane addition. Higher abundance of ANME-2a/b in incubations with methane and sulfate as compared with only sulfate addition was shown by qPCR analysis. Bacterial 16S rRNA gene analysis showed the presence of sulfate-reducing bacteria belonging to SEEP-SRB1. This is the first report that explicitly shows that AOM is associated with sulfate reduction in an enrichment culture of ANME-2a/b and AAA methanotrophs and SEEP-SRB1 sulfate reducers from a low-saline environment.

Anaerobic methane oxidation coupled to sulphate reduction and the use of ethane and propane as electron donors by sulphate-reducing bacteria represent new opportunities for the treatment of streams contaminated with sulphur oxyanions. However, growth of microbial sulphate-reducing populations with methane, propane or butane is extremely slow, which hampers research and development of bioprocesses based on these conversions. Thermodynamic calculations indicate that the growth rate with possible alternative terminal electron acceptors such as thiosulphate and elemental sulphur may be higher, which would facilitate future research. Here, we investigate the use of these electron acceptors for oxidation of methane, ethane and propane, with marine sediment as inoculum. Mixed marine sediments originating from Aarhus Bay (Denmark) and Eckernförde Bay (Germany) were cultivated anaerobically at a pH between 7.2 and 7.8 and a temperature of 15 °C in the presence of methane, ethane and propane and various sulphur electron acceptors. The sulphide production rates in the conditions with methane, ethane and propane with sulphate were respectively 2.3, 2.2 and 1.8 μmol S L(-1) day(-1). For sulphur, no reduction was demonstrated. For thiosulphate, the sulphide production rates were up to 50 times higher compared to those of sulphate, with 86.2, 90.7 and 108.1 μmol S L(-1) day(-1) for methane, ethane and propane respectively. This sulphide production was partly due to disproportionation, 50 % for ethane but only 7 and 14 % for methane and propane respectively. The oxidation of the alkanes in the presence of thiosulphate was confirmed by carbon dioxide production. This is, to our knowledge, the first report of thiosulphate use as electron acceptor with ethane and propane as electron donors. Additionally, these results indicate that thiosulphate is a promising electron acceptor to increase start-up rates for sulphate-reducing bioprocesses coupled to short-chain alkane oxidation.

Root cause analysis (RCA) is one of the most prominent tools used to comprehensively evaluate a biopharmaceutical production process. Despite of its widespread use in industry, the Food and Drug Administration has observed a lot of unsuitable approaches for RCAs within the last years. The reasons for those unsuitable approaches are the use of incorrect variables during the analysis and the lack in process understanding, which impede correct model interpretation. Two major approaches to perform RCAs are currently dominating the chemical and pharmaceutical industry: raw data analysis and feature-based approach. Both techniques are shown to be able to identify the significant variables causing the variance of the response. Although they are different in data unfolding, the same tools as principal component analysis and partial least square regression are used in both concepts. Within this article we demonstrate the strength and weaknesses of both approaches. We proved that a fusion of both results in a comprehensive and effective workflow, which not only increases better process understanding. We demonstrate this workflow along with an example. Hence, the presented workflow allows to save analysis time and to reduce the effort of data mining by easy detection of the most important variables within the given dataset. Subsequently, the final obtained process knowledge can be translated into new hypotheses, which can be tested experimentally and thereby lead to effectively improving process robustness.

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The use of methane and acetate as electron donors for biological reduction of thiosulphate in a 5-L laboratory membrane bioreactor was studied and compared to disproportionation of thiosulphate as competing biological reaction. The reactor was operated for 454 days in semi-batch mode; 30 % of its liquid phase was removed and periodically replenished (days 77, 119, 166, 258, 312 and 385). Although the reactor was operated under conditions favourable to promote thiosulphate reduction coupled to methane oxidation, thiosulphate disproportionation was the dominant microbial process. Pyrosequencing analysis showed that the most abundant microorganisms in the bioreactor were phototrophic green sulphur bacteria (GSB) belonging to the family Chlorobiaceae and thiosulphate-disproportionating bacteria belonging to the genus Desulfocapsa. Even though the reactor system was surrounded with opaque plastic capable of filtering most of the light, the GSB used it to oxidize the hydrogen sulphide produced from thiosulphate disproportionation to elemental sulphur. Interrupting methane and acetate supply did not have any effect on the microbial processes taking place. The ultimate goal of our research was to develop a process that could be applied for thiosulphate and sulphate removal and biogenic sulphide formation for metal precipitation. Even though the system achieved in this study did not accomplish the targeted conversion using methane as electron donor, it does perform microbial conversions which allow to directly obtain elemental sulphur from thiosulphate.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s11356-015-5344-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.