Regueira López, AlberteGonzález Cabaleiro, RebecaOfiteru, Irina DanaRodríguez Rodríguez, JorgeLema Rodicio, Juan Manuel2018-10-122018-10-122017-10-19http://hdl.handle.net/10347/17445The 15th IWA World Conference on Anaerobic Digestion, Beijing, China, 17th-20th october 2017Anaerobic fermentation of wastes with mixed cultures is a promising avenue to treat residues while producing added-value products. But thus far, the lack of control and prediction of the microbial community behaviour hinders any industrial application. One of the fundamental limitations of the process, is that we are not able to foresee the outcome of the process as its stoichiometry is not fully defined. In this work, we present a new metabolic network of fermentation of glucose by mixed cultures. The metabolic network that defines the stoichiometry of the process includes for the first time Electron Bifurcation and Homoacetogenesis. This novel metabolic network was successfully confronted with experimental data through NADH (i.e. electron) balances. Results show that the inclusion of Electron Bifurcation in the network provides a better description of experimental results and suggest its occurrence in the progress. Homoacetogenesis, together with Electron Bifurcation, helps to correctly predict the H2 and CO2 gaseous yields. The new stoichiometry proposed accurately predicts the product yielding, including gaseous products, observed in glucose anaerobic fermentations. This support the consideration of Electron Bifurcation as an important biochemical mechanism in microbial mixed cultures fermentations and remarks the importance of including Homoacetogenesis when analysing anaerobic fermentationsengVFA productionAcidogenic fermentationElectron bifurcationHomoacetogenesisStoichiometryAnaerobic fermentationMetabolic networkMaterias::Investigación::33 Ciencias tecnológicas::3308 Ingeniería y tecnología del medio ambienteconference outputopen access