Performance and bacterial communities of successive alkalinity-producing systems (SAPSs) in passive treatment processes treating mine drainages differing in acidity and metal levels

Abstract

Successive alkalinity-producing systems (SAPSs) is a key unit process in the passive treatment of acidic mine drainage. Physico-chemistry and pyrosequencing-based bacterial communities of two passive treatment processes in Gapjung (GJ) and Seokbong (SB) were analyzed. The influent of SB harbored higher levels of acidity and metals than that of GJ. SAPS-SB demonstrated better performance of acidity neutralization and metal removal than SAPS-GJ, despite its shorter hydraulic retention time and higher acidity. System diagnosis revealed that the capacities of SAPSs were not well predicted in the design steps. Bacterial diversity indices and composition were compared at the same sequence read number for fair evaluation. Most of the bacterial sequences were affiliated with uncultured species. A notable difference was observed in the bacterial community compositions of the SAPSs in GJ and SB. Classes of putative sulfate-reducing bacteria, Clostridia (8.3 %) and Deltaproteobacteria (6.1 %), were detected in SAPS-GJ, and Clostridia (14.6 %) was detected in SAPS-SB. Bacilli, which is not a known sulfate-reducing bacterial group, was the second largest class (12.8 %) in SAPS-GJ and the largest class (51.1 %) in SAPS-SB, suggesting that Bacilli may have a prominent role in SAPS. One hundred ninety operational taxonomic units were shared, which occupied ~10 % of each number of total operational taxonomic units in SAPS-GJ and SAPS-SB, respectively. Bacilli and Clostridia were the major shared classes, and Bacillus, Lysinibacillus, and Ureibacillus were the major shared genera. Rarefaction analysis, richness estimates, diversity estimates, and abundance rank analysis show that the sediment bacterial community of SAPS-GJ was more diverse and more evenly distributed than that of SAPS-SB.