Revealing the correlation of biomethane generation, DOM fluorescence, and microbial community in the mesophilic co-digestion of chicken manure and sheep manure at different mixture ratio

Batch co-digestion tests of chicken manure (CM) and sheep manure (SM) at different ratio ( R s/c ) were conducted under mesophilic condition (35 °C). Batch kinetic analysis of bioCH 4 production, excitation-emission matrix (EEM) fluorescence of dissolved organic matter (DOM), and microbial community were investigated. The well-fitted modified Gompertz model ( R 2 , 0.98–0.99) resulted that the co-digestion markedly improved the methane production rate and shortened the lag phase time. The highest bioCH 4 yield of 219.67 mL/gVS add and maximum production rate of 0.378 mL/gVS add /h were obtained at an optimum R s/c of 0.4. Additionally, a significant variation of DOM was detected at the R s/c of 0.4 with a consistent degradation of soluble microbial byproduct-like and protein-like organics. The positive synergy effects of co-digestion conspicuously enhanced the bioCH 4 production efficiency. FI 370 and NADH were significantly correlated to R s/c ( p < 0.05). Moreover, the correlations among process indicator, EEM-peaks and different environmental parameters were evaluated by Pearson correlation analysis. The high diversity of acetoclastic methanogens and hydrogenotrophic methanogens in the co-digestion improved the stability of process. Graphical Abstract