Abstract
The effects of adsorption, sulfamethoxazole (SMX) content, chemical oxygen demand (COD), and dissolved oxygen (DO) are recognized to be crucial for SMX removal in the aerobic granular sludge (AGS) system. Therefore, we investigated the impact of adsorption and these three different environmental factors on the SMX removal loading rate and removal efficiency of an AGS system, and determined the differences in microbial community composition under different environmental conditions. Adsorption was not the main SMX removal mechanism, as it only accounted for 5% of the total removal. The optimal SMX removal conditions were obtained for AGS when the COD, DO, and SMX concentrations were 600 mg/L, 8 mg/L, and 2,000 µg/L, respectively. The highest SMX removal efficiency was 93.53%. Variations in the three environmental factors promoted the diversity and changes of microbial communities in the AGS system. Flavobacterium, Thauera, and norank_f_Microscillaceae are key microorganisms in the AGS system. Thauera, and norank_f_Microscillaceae were sensitive to increases in SMX concentrations and beneficial for degrading high SMX concentrations. In particular, Flavobacterium abundances gradually decreased with increasing SMX concentrations.
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All data analyzed during this study are included in this published article or are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
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Acknowledgements
This work was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (51608154), Postdoctoral Research Fund of Heilongjiang Province, China (LBH-Z20163), Young Innovative Talents Support Program of Harbin University of Commerce, China (2020CX29), Foundation for Distinguished Young Talents of Harbin University of Commerce, China (18XN026), Joint Guidance Project of Natural Science Foundation of Heilongjiang Province (LH2021E091), Independent Project of State Key Laboratory of Urban Water Resource and Environment, Harbin Institute of Technology, China (2020DX06), Top Peak discipline Innovation Team Project of Harbin University of Commerce, China.
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DC and WLL conceived of the study. ZYC, XMC, HND and GCZ conducted the experiments, collected and analyzed data. YS and DC wrote the manuscript with input from all authors. All authors agreed the results of this manuscript.
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Cui, D., Chen, Z., Cheng, X. et al. Efficiency of sulfamethoxazole removal from wastewater using aerobic granular sludge: influence of environmental factors. Biodegradation 32, 663–676 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10532-021-09959-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10532-021-09959-6