The effect of temperature and retention time on methane production and microbial community composition in staged anaerobic digesters fed with food waste.

The digestion systems had similar biogas production and COD removal rates, and hence differences in temperature, NH4+ concentration, and pH in the reactors resulted in distinct but similarly functioning microbial communities over this range of operating parameters. Consequently, one could reduce operational costs by lowering both the hydrolysis temperature from 65 to 55 °C and the HRT from 17 to 10 days.