In recent years, there has been growing interest in harnessing anaerobic digestion technology for resource recovery from waste streams. This approach has evolved beyond its traditional role in energy generation to encompass the production of valuable carboxylic acids, especially volatile fatty acids (VFAs) like acetic acid, propionic acid, and butyric acid. VFAs hold great potential for various industries and biobased applications due to their versatile properties. Despite increasing global demand, over 90% of VFAs are currently produced synthetically from petrochemicals. Realizing the potential of large-scale biobased VFA production from waste streams offers significant eco-friendly opportunities but comes with several key challenges. These include low VFA production yields, unstable acid compositions, complex and expensive purification methods, and post-processing needs. Among these, production yield and acid composition stand out as the most critical obstacles impacting economic viability and competitiveness. This paper seeks to offer a comprehensive view of combining complementary modeling approaches, including kinetic and microbial modeling, to understand the workings of microbial communities and metabolic pathways in VFA production, enhance production efficiency, and regulate acid profiles through the integration of omics and bioreactor data.

中文翻译：

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生物基短链脂肪酸生产 - 通过动力学和微生物建模方法探索微生物群落动态和代谢网络


近年来，人们对利用厌氧消化技术从废物流中回收资源越来越感兴趣。这种方法已经超越了其在能源生产中的传统作用，涵盖了有价值的羧酸的生产，特别是挥发性脂肪酸（VFA），如乙酸、丙酸和丁酸。由于其多功能特性，VFA 在各种行业和生物基应用中具有巨大潜力。尽管全球需求不断增加，但目前 90% 以上的 VFA 是由石化产品合成生产的。实现利用废物流大规模生产生物基 VFA 的潜力提供了重要的生态友好机会，但也带来了一些关键挑战。这些问题包括低 VFA 产量、不稳定的酸成分、复杂且昂贵的纯化方法以及后处理需求。其中，产量和酸成分是影响经济可行性和竞争力的最关键障碍。本文旨在提供结合互补建模方法（包括动力学和微生物建模）的全面观点，以了解 VFA 生产中微生物群落和代谢途径的运作，提高生产效率，并通过组学和生物反应器数据的整合来调节酸分布。