Comparison of bacterial communities of conventional and A-stage activated sludge systems

Abstract

The bacterial community structure of 10 different wastewater treatment systems and their influents has been investigated through pyrosequencing, yielding a total of 283486 reads. These bioreactors had different technological configurations: conventional activated sludge (CAS) systems and very highly loaded A-stage systems. A-stage processes are proposed as the first step in an energy producing municipal wastewater treatment process. Pyrosequencing analysis indicated that bacterial community structure of all influents was similar. Also the bacterial community of all CAS bioreactors was similar. Bacterial community structure of A-stage bioreactors showed a more case-specific pattern. A core of genera was consistently found for all influents, all CAS bioreactors and all A-stage bioreactors, respectively, showing that different geographical locations in The Netherlands and Spain did not affect the functional bacterial communities in these technologies. The ecological roles of these bacteria were discussed. Influents and A-stage bioreactors shared several core genera, while none of these were shared with CAS bioreactors communities. This difference is thought to reside in the different operational conditions of the two technologies. This study shows that bacterial community structure of CAS and A-stage bioreactors are mostly driven by solids retention time (SRT) and hydraulic retention time (HRT), as suggested by multivariate redundancy analysis.

Arcobacter

“…In this study, Arcobacter was found to be the 4 th most prevalent genus in treated effluent, though NGS technology does not offer insight into the viability of these bacteria. In a recent study, Arcobacter was reported as one of the most prevalent genera in the influent samples to the WWTPs studied (Gonzalez-Martinez et al, 2016). Arcobacter was the most abundant genus in the bioreactor (28%) and together with Bacteroides (25%) represented more than 50% of the total bacterial population.…”

“…This has allowed the determination of the bacterial community diversity at each treatment step Cai et al, 2014;Gonzalez-Martinez et al, 2016). As described by McLellan et al (2010), sewage communities form a unique population structure represented by a combination of inputs (human fecal microbes and enrichment of specific microbes, largely from the environment).…”

“…There have been numerous reports describing the detection of Arcobacter in surface waters (Table 2) such as rivers (Moreno et al, 2003;Collado et al, 2008;Collado et al, 2010), beaches Lee et al, 2012), irrigation water (Banting et al, 2016) , 2015;Gonzalez-Martinez et al, 2016;Webb et al, 2016b). Arcobacter detection in surface water correlates well with the amount of fecal indicator bacteria such as total and fecal coliforms, intestinal enterococci, E. coli and Clostridium perfringens, suggesting a fecal origin , Collado et al,2010Lee et al, 2012;Webb et al, 2016b).…”

“…Arcobacter was the most abundant genus in the bioreactor (28%) and together with Bacteroides (25%) represented more than 50% of the total bacterial population. The potential ecological role attributed to Arcobacter in the bioreactor was BOD removal and de-nitrification (Gonzalez-Martinez et al, 2016).…”

Sequencing Batch Reactor and Bacterial Community in Aerobic Granular Sludge for Wastewater Treatment of Noodle-Manufacturing Sector

“…These techniques have significantly overcome the weakness of traditional methods, but only elucidate the major microbial groups in wastewater treatments. Recently, the metagenomic approach has emerged as one of the most effective and popular techniques for investigating microbial diversity and community in activated sludges [14][15][16][17][18].…”