Low temperature treatment of domestic wastewater by purple phototrophic bacteria: Performance, activity, and community.

Abstract

Low wastewater temperatures affect microbial growth rates and microbial populations, as well as physical chemical characteristics of the wastewater. Wastewater treatment plant design needs to accommodate changing temperatures, and somewhat limited capacity is a key criticism of low strength anaerobic treatment such as Anaerobic Membrane Bioreactors (AnMBR). This study evaluates the applicability of an alternative platform utilizing purple phototrophic bacteria for low temperature domestic wastewater treatment. Two photo-anaerobic membrane bioreactors (PAnMBR) at ambient (22 °C) and low temperatures (10 °C) were compared to fully evaluate temperature response of critical processes. The results show good functionality at 10 °C in comparison with ambient operation. This enabled operation at 10 °C to discharge limits (TCOD < 100 mg L(-1); TN < 10 mg L(-1) and TP < 1 mg L(-1)) at a HRT < 1 d. While capacity of the system was not limited, microbial community showed a strong shift to a far narrower diversity, almost complete dominance by PPB, and of a single Rhodobacter spp. compared to a more diverse community in the ambient reactor. The outcomes of the current work enable applicability of PPB for domestic wastewater treatment to a broad range of regions.

Resource Recovery from Wastewater by Biological Technologies: Opportunities, Challenges, and Prospects

“…Complete assimilation of nutrients by PPB depends on the available organics which have to be added for domestic wastewater but are abundant in industrial sources. Additionally, PPB dominance in a treatment system can be up to 90% (Hülsen et al, 2016a) which would enhance SCP composition. Other bacteria with high nutritional potential such as Cellulomonas sp.…”

Anaerobic treatment of municipal wastewater in a UASB-Digester system : temperature effect on system performance, hydrolysis and methanogenesis

“…The effluent CODsoluble concentration was similar as reported by (Hülsen et al, 2016). Chernicharo et al (2015) achieved a lower effluent CODsoluble of 30 ± 36 mg/L using a UASBdigester system, which in those cases was mainly due to a low influent CODsoluble concentration of 50 ± 10 mg/L.…”

Performance and bacterial community composition of volcanic scoria particles (VSP) in a biological aerated filter (BAF) for micro‐polluted source water treatment

“…The removal rates decreased with decreasing temperature, especially below 10°C. Generally, temperature influences microbial metabolic rates (Hülsen et al, ), and low temperatures will inhibit the activity of microorganisms, such as nitrobacteria, thereby leading to poor removal (Dong, Lu, Yan, Zhang, & Zhang, ). However, when compared with suspended growth systems, the attached growth systems exhibited better performance at low temperatures for removal (Hoilijoki, Kettunen, & Rintala, ; Zhang et al, ).…”