Biological treatment of refractory pollutants in industrial wastewaters under aerobic or anaerobic condition: Batch tests and associated microbial community analysis

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biteb.2021.100927Get rights and content

Highlights

COD removal of 30.0–64.4% for WWTP was obtained by biological treatment.

EN-AOT was biodegraded much better under anaerobic conditions.

High molecular weight long-chain alkanes were highly biodegraded.

The proteobacteria as the dominate bacteria for the refractory organics.

Abstract

In this study, aerobic or anaerobic biological treatment of streams collected from different units of industrial wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) was studied in a series of batch tests. Under aerobic condition, the removal efficiencies of COD, NH4+-N and TP were 57.7%, 83.8% and 100% for influent of WWTP (IN), 64.4%, 61.3% and 100% for effluent of secondary sedimentation tank (EN-SST), and 2.3%, 64.3% and 10.6% for effluent of advanced oxidation tank (EN-AOT). Meanwhile, the removal efficiencies of COD, NH4+-N, TOC were above 30% under anaerobic conditions. The GC–MS analysis showed a presence of 59 kinds of chemicals in IN, 28 in EN-SST, and 8 in EN-AOT. The main organic compounds were long-chain alkanes and derivatives. After aerobic/anaerobic biological treatment, the abundance of Proteobacteria, Bacteroidota, Nitrospirota was 40.4–56.1% (IN), 5.3–17.5% (EN-SST), and 4.6–13.4% (EN-AOT), respectively. This work contributed to deeply understanding the biotransformation mechanisms of refractory pollutants in industrial wastewaters.

Keywords

Industrial wastewater
Activated sludge
Refractory pollutants
Microbial community
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