People > Prof. Dr. Ir. Largus (Lars) Angenent
Professor
Center for Applied Geosciences
Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology
Lars Angenent works in the field of environmental biotechnology with an interest in recovering carbon with open cultures (reactor microbiomes), defined mixed cultures, co-cultures, or pure cultures of microbes. This,
to generate specific products, such as the energy carriers – methane;
medium-chain carboxylic acids, such as n-caproic acid and n-caprylic acid; electric current; n-butanol; and ethanol, among other products. Pretreatment of the biomass
may be necessary to increase the conversion rates, and therefore Lars
Angenent is also interested in physical/chemical (e.g., dilute acid
method), thermochemical (e.g., slow pyrolysis), and biological pretreatment
steps. In regards to bioprocessing,
Lars Angenent studies power-to-gas, power-to-protein, power-to-X, anaerobic fermentation,
bioelectrochemical systems, and syngas fermentation.
Other areas of interest are microbial electrochemical technologies that
are based on microbial electrochemistry.
For organic
waste conversion into bioenergy and biochemicals, Lars Angenent is promoting the carboxylate
platform as an important platform in biorefineries because
water and nutrients must be recycled while bioenergy yields must be
maximized. This platform is based on microbial conversions with open cultures that can handle the complexity and variability of organic
wastes. Therefore, Lars Angenent is interested in the
microbial community dynamics in engineered systems. For this reason,
his lab utilizes second-generation sequencing platforms in combination
with powerful bioinformatic tools and ecology theory.
His interests are broader than just bioprocessing and he is also working on microbial interactions within gut microbiomes.

Lars Angenent in his lab in Tübingen.
Lars Angenent invented a novel anaerobic bioreactor during
his PhD-thesis research:
Anaerobic migrating blanket reactor (AMBR)