Deciphering performance and microbial characterization of marine anammox bacteria-based consortia treating nitrogen-laden hypersaline wastewater: Inhibiting threshold of salinity

Abstract

Hypersaline wastewater posed a challenge to microbial nitrogen removal processes. Herein, halophilic marine anammox bacteria (MAB) were applied to treat nitrogen-rich wastewater with 35–90 g/L salts for the first time. It was found that MAB, with low relative abundance (2.3–6.9 %), still exhibited good nitrogen removal efficiency (>90 %) under 35–70 g/L salts. The specific anammox activity peaked at 180.16 mg N/(g·VSS·d) at 65 g/L salts. MAB secreted more extracellular polymeric substances to resist the adverse effects of hypersaline stress. Nevertheless, the nitrogen removal deteriorated at 75 g/L salts, and further collapsed as the salinity increased. At 90 g/L salts, total nitrogen removal rate decreased by 74 % compared with that of 35 g/L salts. Besides, SBR1031 increased from 12.0 % (35 g/L salts) to 17.4 % (90 g/L salts) and became the dominant bacterial genus in the reactor. This work shed light on the treatment of hypersaline wastewater through MAB.