Biological Iron Removal and Recovery from Water and Wastewater.

Iron is a common contaminant in source water and wastewater. The mining and metallurgical industries in particular can produce and discharge large quantities of wastewater with high iron concentrations. Due to the harmful effects of iron on organisms and infrastructure, efficient technologies for iron removal from water and wastewater are needed. On the other hand, iron is a valuable commodity for a wide range of applications. Microorganisms can facilitate iron removal and recovery through aerobic and anaerobic processes. The most commonly utilized microbes include iron oxidizers that facilitate iron precipitation as jarosites, schwertmannite, ferrihydrite, goethite, and scorodite, and sulfate reducers which produce hydrogen sulfide that precipitates iron as sulfides. Biological iron removal has been explored in various suspended cell and biofilm-based bioreactors that can be configured in parallel or series and integrated with precipitation and settling units for an effective flow sheet. This chapter reviews principles for biological iron removal and recovery, the microorganisms involved, reactor types, patents and examples of laboratory- and pilot-scale studies, and full-scale implementations of the technology.

Bacterial diversity in a mine water treatment plant.

We investigated the microbial community in a pilot plant for treatment of acid mine water by biological ferrous iron oxidation using clone library analysis and calculated statistical parameters for further characterization. The microbial community in the plant was conspicuously dominated by a group of Betaproteobacteria affiliated with "Ferribacter polymyxa".

Bench-scale study of the effect of phosphate on an aerobic iron oxidation plant for mine water treatment.

At the opencast pit Nochten acidic iron- and sulfate-rich mine waters are treated biotechnologically in a mine-water treatment plant by microbial iron oxidation. Due to the low phosphate concentration in such waters the treatment plant was simulated in bench-scale to investigate the influence of addition of potassium dihydrogen phosphate on chemical and biological parameters of the mine-water treatment. As a result of the phosphate addition the number of cells increased, which resulted in an increase of the iron oxidation rate in the reactor with phosphate addition by a factor of 1.7 compared to a reference approach without phosphate addition. Terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism (T-RFLP) analysis during the cultivation revealed a shift of the microbial community depending on the phosphate addition. While almost exclusively iron-oxidizing bacteria related to "Ferrovum" sp. were detected with phosphate addition, the microbial community was more diverse without phosphate addition. In the latter case, iron-oxidizing bacteria ("Ferrovum" sp., Acidithiobacillus spp.) as well as non-iron-oxidizing bacteria (Acidiphilium sp.) were identified.

New cultivation medium for "Ferrovum" and Gallionella-related strains.

Since the first isolation of the well-known iron oxidizer Acidithiobacillus ferrooxidans various media and techniques have been developed to isolate new species of acidophilic iron-oxidizing bacteria. A successful strategy in many cases was the use of iFeo medium in double-layer plates with a heterotrophic strain in the underlayer. However, even with samples which had been shown by molecular techniques to be dominated by "Ferrovum myxofaciens" and Gallionella-related bacteria, these bacteria were isolated considerably less frequently than Acidithiobacillus spp. on iFeo. Therefore, a new medium was designed which corresponded largely to the chemical composition of the mine water in a treatment plant dominated by the bacterial groups mentioned and was called artificial pilot-plant water (APPW). The analyses of approximately 500 colonies obtained from mine waters of two different sampling sites by PCR with primers specific for Acidithiobacillus spp., "Ferrovum" spp., Gallionella relatives, and Acidiphilium spp. revealed higher abundances of "Ferrovum" spp. and Gallionella relatives on the newly designed APPW medium than on iFeo which favored Acidithiobacillus spp. Molecular analysis of the colonies obtained indicated the occurrence of at least two species of iron-oxidizing bacteria and/or the heterotrophic Acidiphilium spp. in most of the colonies. Furthermore, the influence on the isolation of the concentrations of iron, phosphate, and ammonium of APPW, in levels of the iFeo medium previously described was studied.

Population dynamics of iron-oxidizing communities in pilot plants for the treatment of acid mine waters.

The iron-oxidizing microbial community in two pilot plants for the treatment of acid mine water was monitored to investigate the influence of different process parameters such as pH, iron concentration, and retention time on the stability of the system to evaluate the applicability of this treatment technology on an industrial scale. The dynamics of the microbial populations were followed using T-RFLP (terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism) over a period of several months. For a more precise quantification, two TaqMan assays specific for the two prominent groups were developed and the relative abundance of these taxa in the iron-oxidizing community was verified by real-time PCR. The investigations revealed that the iron-oxidizing community was clearly dominated by two groups of Betaproteobacteria affiliated with the poorly known and not yet recognized species "Ferrovum myxofaciens" and with strains related to Gallionella ferruginea, respectively. These taxa dominated the microbial community during the whole investigation period and accelerated the oxidation of ferrous iron despite the changing characteristics of mine waters flowing into the plants. Thus, it is assumed that the treatment technology can also be applied to other mine sites and that these organisms play a crucial role in such treatment systems.