Abstract
To investigate the differences in activated sludge microbial communities of different wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) and understand their metabolic potentials, we sampled sludge from every biological treatment unit of 5 full-scale waste water treatment systems in 3 typical Chinese municipal WWTPs. The microbial communities and overall metabolic patterns were not only affected by influent characteristics but also varied between different biological treatment units. Distinct genera in different wastewater treatment systems were identified. The important microorganisms in domestic sewage treatment systems were unclassified SHA-20, Caldilinea, Dechloromonas, and unclassified genera from Rhodospirilaceae and Caldilineaceae. The important microorganisms in dyeing wastewater treatment systems were Nitrospira, Sphingobacteriales, Thiobacillus, Sinobacteraceae and Comamonadaceae. Compared with the obvious differences in microbial community composition, the metabolic potential showed no significant differences.
Highlights
Textile dyeing and fine chemical industries have a prominent focus in certain areas of eastern China
The performance of Qige wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) had the best performance in chemical oxygen demand (COD), biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) and nitrogen removal which was ascribed to the better biodegradable in inflow
This genus is capable of reducing perchlorate and chlorate, which is associated with nitrate reductase (Achenbach et al 2001)
Summary
Textile dyeing and fine chemical industries have a prominent focus in certain areas of eastern China. A large amount of industrial wastewater is discharged into local industrial zone WWTPs after simple pretreatments. This type of inflow adds pressure to the normal operation of local WWTPs due to the existence of refractory organic substances (e.g., chemical synthetic dyestuff, auxiliary assistants and other chemicals). Similar to domestic sewage, the industrial effluents require biological treatment for effective removal of the organic pollutants (Orhon et al 2009). The AS process is widely used biological treatment in all municipal-grade wastewater treatment plants due to its low operation cost (Wagner and Loy 2002).
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