Excellent work by Dr. Mahendra Raut, who has demonstrated in a new publication in Bioresource Technology, that pre-treatment of biomass using a microbial consortium method can have profound enhancements in energy yield, IF the right consortium is used.
It may seem simple, but using adapted microbial communities to perform the important pre-treatment step in anaerobic digestion with substrates such as barley straw and hay, can make the whole process a lot more efficient. The work was funded through BBSRC and included Professor Philip Wright (Newcastle University).