PI: FI: Prof James Lyng (UCD, Project lead)Staff: Postdoctorate Researchers:
Dr Ajay Menon (from April 2019)The main goal of the project is to assess the potential for individual or sequential pre-treatments combinations of high voltage pulse electric fields to induce cell/biosolid lysis leading to an enhanced substrate for bioconversion.

The work has been divided in five different work tasks (WT): WT1. Literature review, method development, and design future experiments; WT2. Screening of substrates in terms of suitability for biogas production.; WT3. Assessment of physically disruptive pre-treatments for the substrates chosen for further study in terms of biogas production; WT4. Short circuiting the anaerobic digestion pathways to produce medium chain fatty acids (a new WT in addition to what was included in the original proposal)WT5. Cost benefit analysis of pre-treatments for production of biogas and other products.Publications:Menon, A; Lyng, JG, Circular bioeconomy solutions: driving anaerobic digestion of waste streams towards production of high value medium chain fatty acids, Reviews in Environmental Science and Biotechnology, 10.1007/s11157-020-09559-5