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Light stimulation strategy for tackling ammonia-inhibited anaerobic digestion: effectiveness, mechanisms, critical factors and practical potentials.

Yunxin Zhu,Yingnan Yang

Published 2025 in Bioresource Technology

ABSTRACT

Ammonia inhibition severely constrains anaerobic digestion (AD) of nitrogen-rich waste by disrupting microbial activity. Light stimulation strategy (LSS) has recently emerged as a bio-directed approach to increase methane yield (up to 2-fold) with visible light (370-800 nm) under ammonia toxicity of 2000-8000 mg/L. The LSS principles, critical parameters (intensity, duration and wavelength), and their integration with functional material are analyzed to guide process optimization. Moreover, the proposed multi-level mechanisms, including microbial community restructuring, strengthened electron transfer networks, and regulated metabolic pathways, are summarized. The review also highlights recent cross-field validations showing LSS effects on non-phototrophic H2-producing bacteria, denitrifiers and sulfate-reducing consortia, confirming the universality of this bioactivation phenomenon. Finally, the current bottlenecks, including limited light penetration, methodological inconsistency, and lack of molecular-level evidence, are discussed, together with future directions toward multi-omics mechanistic elucidation, solar-driven reactor design, and techno-economic assessment for scalable, carbon-neutral LSS-assisted AD systems.

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