To understand how extracellular polymer substances (EPS) as additives promotes methanogenesis, 9 batch tests of methane production potential in anaerobic reactors with the addition of EPS or not were conducted.
10Research showed that EPS increased remarkably methane production during anaerobic digestion 11 (36.5% increase compared with the control). EPS enriched functional microorganisms such as Firmicutes,
12Actinobacteria, Synergistetes, and Chloroflexi. Among them, 8.86% OTUs from the important hydrolysis and 13 acidification phyla, which may be an important reason for the enhanced methanogenic capacity of anaerobic 14 granular sludge. Additionally, EPS also improved the abundance of cytochrome c (c-Cyts), accelerating the 15 direct interspecies electron transfer (DIET) between syntrophic bacteria and methanogens, thus enhancing the 16 methane production. Interestingly, the average particle size, volatile suspended solids/total suspended solids 17 (VSS/TSS) and EPS content of anaerobic granular sludge (AnGS) in the EPS reactor were approximately equal 18 to that of the control reactor during the anaerobic digestion, illustrating that EPS could not affect the 19 physicochemical properties of AnGS. Therefore, these results suggested that EPS mainly played a role in the 20 form of conductive materials in the anaerobic digestion process. Compared with conductive materials, EPS as 21 biomass conductive materials was not only environmentally friendly and economical but also no secondary 22 pollution. 23 materials 25 26
Importance 27Compared with the reported conductive materials, EPS has the potential of biodegradation, electron transfer 28 and no significant secondary pollution. Besides, there are few studies on the utilization of EPS resources, 29 especially the effect of EPS as an additive on anaerobic digestion performance. To clarify whether EPS as 30 conductive materials or carbon source promotes methanogenesis. Therefore, in this study, we investigated the 31 influence of EPS as an additive on the methanogenic capacity, physical-chemical properties, microbial 32 community structure and metabolic function of anaerobic granular sludge (AnGS), and preliminarily expatiate 33 the influence mechanism of EPS as an additive on methanogenesis. At the meantime, the research is expected to 34 provide new solutions for the improvement of anaerobic digestion performance and disposal of waste mud. 35 36 43 1 *Corresponding authors. Tel.: +86 18648908256; fax: +86 18648908256.