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Comparison of the effects of salinity on microbial community structures and functions in sequencing batch reactors with and without carriers

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Abstract

This study investigated and compared the microbial communities between a sequencing batch reactor (SBR) without carriers and a hybrid SBR with addition of carriers for the treatment of saline wastewater. The two systems were operated over 292 days with alternating aerobic/anoxic mode (temperature: 28℃, salinity: 0.0–3.0%). High removal efficiency of chemical oxygen demand (COD) and total inorganic nitrogen (TIN) was achieved in both the SBR (above 86.7 and 95.4% respectively) and hybrid SBR (above 84.4 and 94.0%) at 0.0–2.5% salinity. Further increasing salinity to 3.0% decreased TIN removal efficiency to 78.4% in the hybrid SBR. Steep decline of biodiversity and relative abundance of ammonia-oxidizing bacteria (AOB) contributed to the worse performance. More genera related to sulfide-oxidizing and sulfate-reducing bacteria were detected in the hybrid SBR than the SBR at 3.0% salinity. The abundance of halotolerant bacteria increased with the salinity increase for both reactors, summing up to 25.5% in the suspended sludge (S-sludge) from the SBR, 28.9 and 22.9% in the S-sludge and biofilm taken from the hybrid SBR, respectively. Nitrification and denitrification via nitrate was the main nitrogen removal pathway in the SBR and hybrid SBR at 0.0 and 0.5% salinity, while partial nitrification and denitrification via nitrite became the key process for nitrogen removal in the two reactors when the salinity was increased to 1.0–3.0%. Higher abundance of anaerobic ammonium-oxidizing (ANAMMOX) and sulfide-oxidizing autotrophic denitrification (SOAD) bacteria were found in the hybrid SBR at 3.0% salinity.

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Acknowledgements

The work was funded by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (No. 201964003) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 51978636).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Lab of Marine Environment and Ecology, Ministry of Education, Ocean University of China, Qingdao, 266100, China

    Ting Li, Zixuan Guo, Zonglian She, Yangguo Zhao, Liang Guo, Mengchun Gao, Chunji Jin & Junyuan Ji

  2. College of Environmental Science and Engineering, Ocean University of China, Qingdao, 266100, China

    Zonglian She, Yangguo Zhao, Liang Guo, Mengchun Gao, Chunji Jin & Junyuan Ji

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  1. Ting Li
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Li, T., Guo, Z., She, Z. et al. Comparison of the effects of salinity on microbial community structures and functions in sequencing batch reactors with and without carriers. Bioprocess Biosyst Eng 43, 2175–2188 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00449-020-02403-8

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