Abstract
This study investigated structural changes in microbial community of biological nutrient removal (BNR) in response to changes in substrate composition (ammonium and phosphate), redox condition, and morphological characteristics (flocs to granules), with a focus on nitrification and phosphate removal. Analyzing treatment performance and 16S rRNA phylogenetic gene sequencing data suggested that heterotrophic nitrification (HN) and autotrophic nitrification (AN) potentially happened in aerobic organic-rich (HN_AS) and aerobic organic-deficient (AN_AS) activated sludge batch reactors, respectively. However, phosphate release and uptake were not observed under alternating anaerobic/aerobic regime. Phosphate release could not be induced even when anaerobic phase was extended, although Accumulibacter existed in the inoculum (5.1% of total bacteria). Some potential HN (e.g., Thauera, Acinetobacter, Flavobacterium), AN (e.g., Nitrosomonas (3.2%) and Nitrospira), and unconventional phosphate-accumulating organisms (PAOs) were identified. Putative HN bacteria (i.e., Thauera (29–36%) and Flavobacterium (18–25%)) were enriched in aerobic granular sludge (AGS) regardless of the granular reactor operation mode. Enrichment of HN organisms in the AGS was suspected to be mainly due to granulation, possibly due to the floc-forming ability of HN species. Thus, HN is likely to play a role in nitrogen removal in AGS reactors. This study is supposed to serve as a starting point for the investigation of the microbial communities of AS- and AGS-based BNR processes. It is recommended that the identified roles for the isolated bacteria are further investigated in future works.
Highlights
Molecular techniques have identified numerous bacteria from diverse genera and phyla, and sometimes organisms from distinct kingdoms (i.e., Archaea and Eukarya) in wastewater treatment processes [1,2]
Integrating heterotrophic nitrification (HN)–aerobic denitrification (AD) process by a single species is of practical interest, because it can result in convenient simultaneous nitrification–denitrification (SND) in a single biological wastewater treatment reactor
Nitrate accumulation started at hour 24 and continued with a constant rate of
Summary
Molecular techniques have identified numerous bacteria from diverse genera and phyla, and sometimes organisms from distinct kingdoms (i.e., Archaea and Eukarya) in wastewater treatment processes [1,2]. Heterotrophic nitrification (HN) has been attributed to diverse bacteria distributing across ten genera, including Arthrobacter [3], Acinetobacter [4,5], Pseudomonas [6,7], Alcaligenes [8], Bacillus [9,10], Thiosphaera [11], Comamonas [12], and Thauera [1]. In most of these studies, it is reported that the identified HN species can simultaneously perform HN and aerobic denitrification (AD). The SND can be accomplished in a single bioreactor using emerging technologies such as anaerobic ammonium oxidation (anammox) and aerobic granular sludge (AGS), albeit with difficulty, because certain operating conditions should be maintained to allow culturing organisms with incompatible metabolic requirements, i.e., anammox, AN, and AXD bacteria, and polyphosphateaccumulating organisms (PAOs) [13,14]
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