Response of denitrifying anaerobic methane oxidation enrichment to salinity stress: Process and microbiology.

Denitrifying anaerobic methane oxidation (DAMO) is a novel biological process which could decrease nitrogen pollution and methane emission simultaneously in wastewater treatment. Salinity as a key environmental factor has important effects on microbial community and activity, however, it remains unclear for DAMO microorganisms. In this study, response of the enrichment of DAMO archaea and bacteria to different salinity was investigated from the aspect of process and microbiology. The results showed that the increasing salinity from 0.14% to 25% evidently deteriorated DAMO process, with the average removal rate of nitrate and methane decreased from 1.91 mg N/(L·d) to 0.07 mg N/(L·d) and 3.22 µmol/d to 0.59 µmol/d, respectively. The observed IC50 value of salinity on the DAMO culture was 1.73%. Further microbial analyses at the gene level suggested that the relative abundance of DAMO archaea in the enrichment decreased to 46%, 39%, 38% and 33% of the initial value. However, DAMO bacteria suffered less impact with the relative abundance maintaining over 75% of the initial value (except 1% salinity). In functional genes of DAMO bacteria, pmoA, decreased gradually from 100% to 86%, 43%, 15% and 2%, while mcrA (DAMO archaea) maintained at 67%-97%. This difference probably indicated DAMO bacteria appeared functional inhibition prior to community inhibition, which was opposite for the DAMO archaea. Results above-mentioned concluded that, though the process of nitrate-dependent anaerobic methane oxidation was driven by the couple of DAMO archaea and bacteria, they individually featured different response to high salinity stress. These findings could be helpful for the application of DAMO-based process in high salinity wastewater treatment, and also the understanding to DAMO microorganisms.

Singlet oxygen-dominated electrocatalytic oxidation treatment for the high-salinity quaternary ammonium compound wastewater with Ti/(RuxIry)O2 anode.

The widespread application of quaternary ammonium compounds (QAC) has posed a serious hazard to the environment and human being, and high concentration of Cl- in QAC wastewater may further increase the difficulty of pollutants elimination. In this study, such a QAC wastewater under high salinity conditions was chosen as the target, the prepared Ti/(RuxIry)O2 anode exhibited favorable catalytic performance for the oxidation and mineralization of QAC under high salinity conditions. Increasing the Ru/Ir ratio of Ti-based electrode coating also slightly promoted the inner catalytic capacity. The combination of electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) and quenching experiments indicates that 1O2 served as a main reactive specie in the Ti/(RuxIry)O2 electrooxidation system. The increase of pH could decrease the removal efficiency of QAC for the reduced 1O2 yield, and the rise of Cl- concentration could favor the QAC oxidation, and Cl- was a better electrolyte to promote the oxidation of organic contaminants when compared to Na2SO4 or Na2CO3. Additionally, the conversion pathway of the model pollutant was tentatively investigated, the results demonstrated that there were almost no halogenated final products residual by electrocatalytic oxidation with Ti/(RuxIry)O2 anode. This study not only elucidate the reaction mechanism of Ti/(RuxIry)O2 anode electrocatalytic oxidation of high salinity QAC wastewater, but also may provide an efficacious and eco-friendly method for the treatment of high salinity QAC wastewater.

Insights into microbial community in microbial fuel cells simultaneously treating sulfide and nitrate under external resistance.

The effect of electricity, induced by external resistance, on microbial community performance is investigated in Microbial Fuel Cells (MFCs) involved in simultaneous biotransformation of sulfide and nitrate. In the experiment, three MFCs were operated under different external resistances (100 Ω, 1000 Ω and 10,000 Ω), while one MFC was operated with open circuit as control. All MFCs demonstrate good capacity for simultaneous sulfide and nitrate biotransformation regardless of external resistance. MFCs present similar voltage profile; however, the output voltage has positive relationship with external resistance, and the MFC1 with lowest external resistance (100 Ω) generated highest power density. High-throughput sequencing confirms that taxonomic distribution of suspended sludge in anode chamber encompass phylum level to genus level, while the results of principal component analysis (PCA) suggest that microbial communities are varied with external resistance, which external resistance caused the change of electricity generation and substrate removal at the same, and then leads to the change of microbial communities. However, based on Pearson correlation analyses, no strong correlation is evident between community diversity indices (ACE index, Chao index, Shannon index and Simpson index) and the electricity (final voltage and current density). It is inferred that the performance of electricity did not significantly affect the diversity of microbial communities in MFCs biotransforming sulfide and nitrate simultaneously.

Characterization of oligotrophic AnAOB culture: morphological, physiological, and ecological features.

Anaerobic ammonium oxidation (anammox) process is regarded as a promising nitrogen removal technology to treat ammonium wastewaters in a wide concentration range. Oligotrophic anaerobic ammonia oxidation bacteria (O-AnAOB) culture has been successfully achieved from a new anammox system to treat superlow ammonium concentration wastewaters. In this work, the O-AnAOB culture was compared with the eutrophic AnAOB (E-AnAOB) culture to reveal its physiological, morphological, and ecological features. Results showed that the specific anammox activity (SAA) of O-AnAOB culture was 0.07 kgN/(kgVSS·d) with the nitrogen removal rate (NRR) of 0.20 kgN/ (m3 d) in the reactor, while the SAA of E-AnAOB culture was 2.11 kgN/(kgVSS·d) with the NRR of 11.10 kgN/(m3 d). The hzs gene transcription levels (hzs-mRNA) of O-AnAOB and E-AnAOB cultures were 1.32 × 109 copies/gVSS and 1.51 × 1010 copies/gVSS, respectively. Morphologically, the O-AnAOB culture took on the unique brown color rather than the typical red color of E-AnAOB. The O-AnAOB cells lived in a disperse pattern in the culture. The cells were seriously deformed with deep craters on the cell wall. The size of anammoxsome and paryphoplasm compartments inside the O-AnAOB cells was smaller than that inside the E-AnAOB cells. Ecologically, the O-AnAOB culture had special microbial community with a higher bacterial diversity than the E-AnAOB. The most dominant genera in O-AnAOB were Anaerolineaceae (33.7%, fermentative bacteria), Candidatus Kuenenia (17.4%, anammox bacteria), and Nitrospira (7.3%, nitrite oxidizing bacteria). This study provided an insight into the new anammox process for deep nitrogen removal from wastewaters.

An overlooked nanofluids effect from Fe3O4 nanoparticles enhances mass transfer in anammox granular sludge.

Magnetite (Fe3O4) particles have been widely reported to enhance the anammox's activity in anammox granular sludge (AnGS), yet the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. This study demonstrates that both Fe3O4 microparticles (MPs) and nanoparticles (NPs) at a dosage of 200 mg Fe3O4/L significantly increased the specific anammox activity (SAA) of AnGS. Additionally, the transcriptional activities of the hzs and hdh genes involved in the anammox process, as well as the heme c content in AnGS, were also notably enhanced. Notably, Fe3O4 NPs were more effective than MPs in boosting anammox activity within AnGS. Mechanistically, Fe3O4 MPs released free iron, which anammox bacteria utilized to promote the synthesis of key enzymes, thereby enhancing their activity. Compared to MPs, Fe3O4 NPs not only elevated the synthesis of these key enzymes to a higher level but also induced a nanofluids effect on the surface of AnGS, improving substrate permeability and accessibility to intragranular anammox bacteria. Moreover, the nanofluids effect was identified as the primary mechanism through which Fe3O4 NPs enhanced anammox activity within AnGS. These findings provide new insights into the effects of nanoparticles on granular sludge systems, extending beyond AnGS.

Phosphate removal from aqueous solutions by nanoscale zero-valent iron.

In this study, nanoscale zero-valent iron (NZVI) was synthesized by conventional liquid-phase chemical reduction methods without a support material and then characterized by transmission electron microscopy (TEM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD). The effect of NZVI particles on phosphate removal from aqueous solutions was examined. The results showed that the phosphate removal efficiency increased from 34.49% to 87.01% as the dosage of nanoscale iron particles increased from 100 to 600 mg L(-1) with an initial phosphate concentration of 10 mg L(-1), and the phosphate removal efficiency decreased from 72.89% to 51.39% as the initial phosphate concentration increased from 10 to 90 mg L(-1), with 400 mg L(-1) NZVI. Phosphate removal efficiencies of 99.41% and 95.09% were achieved at pH values of 2 and 4, respectively, with an initial phosphate concentration of 20 mg L(-1) and 400mg L(-1) NZVI. The use of NZVI particles synthesized in a carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC)-water solution significantly enhanced phosphate removal from an aqueous solution compared with the use of NZVI synthesized in an ethanol-water solution. NZVI particles achieved 71.34% phosphate removal, which was remarkably higher than that of microscale zero-valent iron (MZVI) particles (16.35%) with 10 mg L(-1) of phosphate and 400mg L(-1) iron. Based on the removal mechanism analysis performed in this study, we recommend that phosphate removal be accomplished by simultaneous adsorption and chemical precipitation. The XRD patterns of the NZVI before and after the reactions indicated the formation of crystalline vivianite (Fe3(PO4)2 x 8H2O) during the procedure.

Deep Hierarchical Multimodal Metric Learning.

Multimodal metric learning aims to transform heterogeneous data into a common subspace where cross-modal similarity computing can be directly performed and has received much attention in recent years. Typically, the existing methods are designed for nonhierarchical labeled data. Such methods fail to exploit the intercategory correlations in the label hierarchy and, therefore, cannot achieve optimal performance on hierarchical labeled data. To address this problem, we propose a novel metric learning method for hierarchical labeled multimodal data, named deep hierarchical multimodal metric learning (DHMML). It learns the multilayer representations for each modality by establishing a layer-specific network corresponding to each layer in the label hierarchy. In particular, a multilayer classification mechanism is introduced to enable the layerwise representations to not only preserve the semantic similarities within each layer, but also retain the intercategory correlations across different layers. In addition, an adversarial learning mechanism is proposed to bridge the cross-modality gap by producing indistinguishable features for different modalities. Through integration of the multilayer classification and adversarial learning mechanisms, DHMML can obtain hierarchical discriminative modality-invariant representations for multimodal data. Experiments on two benchmark datasets are used to demonstrate the superiority of the proposed DHMML method over several state-of-the-art methods.

The shock of benzalkonium chloride on aerobic granular sludge system and its microbiological mechanism.

Quaternary ammonium compounds (QACs) are a kind of biocides and surfactants widely used around the world and wastewater treatment systems were identified as its largest pool. QACs could significantly inhibit microbial activity in biological treatment. Aerobic granular sludge (AGS) is an emerging wastewater biological treatment technology with high efficiency and resistance, but it is still unclear if AGS system could tolerate QACs shock. In this study, a typical QAC (benzalkonium chloride (BACC12)) was selected to investigate its effect on AGS system. Results indicate that BAC could inhibit the pollutants removal performance of AGS system, including COD, NH4+-N and PO43- in the short term and the inhibition ratio had positive correlation with BAC concentration. However, AGS system could gradually adapt to the BAC stress and recover its original performance. BAC shock could destroy AGS structure by decreasing its particle size and finally leading to particle disintegration. Although AGS could secret more EPS to resist the stress, BAC still had significant inhibition on cell activity. Microbial community analysis illustrated that after high BAC concentration shock in short term, Thauera decreased significantly while Flavobacterium became the dominant genus. However, after the performance of AGS system recovered the dominant genus returned to Thauera and relevant denitrifiers Phaeodactylibacter, Nitrosomonas and Pseudofulvimonas also increased. The typical phosphorous removal microorganism Rubrivivax and Leadbetterella also showed the similar trend. The variation of denitrification and phosphorus removal microbial community was consistent with AGS system performance indicating the change of functional microorganism played key role in the AGS response to BAC stress.

Storage strategy for shale gas flowback water based on non-bactericide microorganism control.

Shale gas is a promising unconventional natural gas in the world, however the produced flowback water have severe challenges to surrounding water resource. Conventional reuse technology uses bactericide to control corrosive microorganism, which might bring uncontrolled drug resistance and other secondary pollution. In this study, storage strategy of flowback water was designed as a pre-control stage to decline corrosive microorganism. Dissolved oxygen and temperature were chosen as two key parameters based on microbial physiological and biochemical characteristics. Results showed that under the cross effect of temperature and dissolved oxygen, 15 °C and anaerobic condition had the optimal microorganism control effectiveness. Microorganism amount and live/dead cell ratio decreased by 63.7% and 68.74% respectively compared raw water. COD removal efficiency reduced to only 20%, indicating that the microorganism activity was extremely inhibited. However, microorganism in flowback water was more sensitive to dissolved oxygen compared to temperature. Redundancy analysis confirmed that dissolved oxygen contribution was as high as 91.5% while temperature was not significant (p > 0.05), the contribution rate was only 8.5%. Thermococcus, Archaeoglobus, Thermovirga, Thermotoga and Moorella were the dominated thermophilic, anaerobic and sulfate reduction or metal corrosion microorganism in flowback water, so all these identified microorganisms were control targets. Importantly, all the target microorganisms detected in flowback water were declined after different storage strategies. This study provides an effective storage strategy for flowback water to inhibit the microbial amount and activity without biocides addition, which could help promote the green exploitation of shale gas.

Modification of NaY zeolite by lanthanum and hexadecyl trimethyl ammonium bromide and its removal performance for nitrate.

Nitrate in the effluent of wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) is the main nitrogen resource in natural water. The excessive nitrogen in natural water causes ecological issues such as aqueous eutrophication. A novel modified NaY zeolite (SMZ-La) with hexadecyl trimethyl ammonium bromide (HDTMA) and lanthanum (La) as modifying agents for NO 3 - -N adsorption was investigated in this study. Results showed that SMZ-La had a higher adsorption capacity (3.82 mg NO 3 - -N/g) than zeolite only modified with HDTMA or La (2.75 and 2.23 mg NO 3 - -N/g, respectively). Moreover, the adsorption process was endothermic with a maximum theoretic adsorption of 14.49 mg NO 3 - -N/g. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) analysis indicated that adsorption rate principally depended on chemisorption between SMZ and NO 3 - -N. Thermogravimetric analysis showed that HDTMA was loaded on the surface of NaY zeolite with double layer. Scanning electron microscope and X-ray spectroscopy analysis illustrated that La was primarily loaded in the pore of NaY zeolite, and the loading of HDTMA and La did not affect the original crystal structure of NaY zeolite. The novel adsorbent provided a promising perspective for nitrogen control in WWTPs and natural water. PRACTITIONER POINTS: A novel modified zeolite (SMZ-La) was prepared successfully with HDTMA and La. SMZ-La had an excellent adsorption capacity compared to SMZ and NaY-La. There were both physical and chemical adsorptions in the adsorption process of SMZ-La on NO 3 - -N.

Long-term performance of denitrifying anaerobic methane oxidation under stepwise cooling and ambient temperature conditions.

Nitrate-dependent anaerobic methane oxidation (N-DAMO), a bioprocess that couples the oxidation of green gas and the removal of nitrogen oxides in a microbial group, has gained much attention as a potential economical method of biological removal of nitrates and methane from wastewater. Low-temperature (20 °C) operation of N-DAMO would be beneficial to utilize the methane dissolved in the effluent and thus decrease the cost of maintaining the bioreactor temperature in wastewater treatment. Here, the long-term (>350 days) operational activities of N-DAMO were evaluated to assess the performance of N-DAMO from stepwise cooling (30-20 °C) to ambient temperatures (13-38 °C). Under stepwise cooling conditions, the activity of the N-DAMO community was first inhibited and then rapidly adjusted. Notably, a similar N-DAMO activity was observed at 30 °C and 20 °C. Under ambient temperature conditions, the highest nitrate removal rate observed at the beginning of the test was 7.14 mg-N/L/d, which was 5.3 times higher than that recorded at the end of the test. This indicates that the long-term temperature fluctuation irreversibly inhibited N-DAMO activity. 16S rRNA gene sequencing analyses found that the functional archaea were ANME-2D, which has been deemed as the dominant culture in the N-DAMO process. The abundance of ANME-2D on the last day at stepwise cooling temperature conditions was much higher than on day 0, but disappeared after a long period of operation at ambient temperature. It was assumed that N-DAMO would stabilize at stepwise cooling temperature conditions, but not at ambient temperature. Our findings could offer a promising technology for anaerobic wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) in temperate and warm climate zones.

Deciphering correlation between chromaticity and activity of anammox sludge.

The red color is the most striking character of anaerobic ammonium-oxidizing bacteria (AnAOB) which has been used to estimate the anammox activity roughly. However, the quantitative relationship between the color and activity of anammox sludge still remains unknown. In this study, the chromaticity, activity and their correlation were systematically investigated at different steady-state nitrogen loading rates. The chromaticity of anammox sludge was digitalized by the CIE L*a*b* color space. The results revealed that the average chroma value was found to be significantly correlated with specific anammox activity (r = 0.940, p < 0.01) and the cluster centers of chromaticity coordinates (a*, b*) of anammox sludge were established to define the typical working states of anammox system. The visible spectra of anammox sludge were proved to originate from the cytochrome c. The correlation between chroma and heme c concentration of anammox sludge was consistent with the fully-reduced cytochrome c and the chroma was determined by both content and redox ratio of cytochrome c. The chromaticity of anammox sludge was able to be linked with the anammox activity via reduced cytochrome c content. The gene abundance of cytochrome c synthetase linked the chromaticity with AnAOB quantity via total cytochrome c content, while the enzyme activity of octaheme hydrazine dehydrogenase linked the chromaticity with AnAOB activity via reduced cytochrome c ratio. Moreover, the redundancy analysis proved that heme c, as the key component of cytochrome c, was the most important explanatory variable accounting for the maximum 69.6% of the total variation of the anammox community, which correlated positively with the relative abundance of dominant AnAOB (Candidatus Kuenenia). This work aimed at demonstrating the chromaticity of anammox sludge could be developed as an alternative intuitive anammox activity indicator which will promote the monitoring and optimization of anammox process.

Granular activated carbon assisted nitrate-dependent anaerobic methane oxidation-membrane bioreactor: Strengthening effect and mechanisms.

Eutrophication and global warming are two main urgent environmental problems around the world. Nitrate-dependent Anaerobic Methane Oxidation (NdAMO) is a bioprocess coupling nitrate reduction with anaerobic methane oxidation, which could mitigate of these two environmental issues simultaneously. In this study, a newly granular active carbon-NdAMO-membrane bioreactor (GAC-NdAMO-MBR) system was established to evaluate its nitrogen removal efficiency, membrane fouling property and the probable strengthening mechanism was also uncovered. Results indicated that the nitrate removal rate in GAC-NdAMO-MBR reached 31.85 ± 3.19 mgN·L-1·d-1 while it was only 10.35 ± 2.02 mgN·L-1·d-1 in NdAMO-MBR system (lack of GAC), which was multiplied three-fold. The membrane flux decay rate of GAC- NdAMO -MBR was 0.15 L/m2·h·d while it was 0.49 L/m2·h·d without GAC, and the addition of GAC could extend membrane fouling time for 2.5 times. Notablely, the relative abundance of NdAMO bacteria sharply increased from 27.15% to 56.91% after GAC addition while the NdAMO archaea showed similar variation trend. The physicochemical property of GAC mainly contributed the strengthening effect. The porous structure of GAC absorbed methane and adhered by microorganism, which enhance microorganism amount and metabolic activity. The mechanical strength of GAC scoured membrane surface to mitigate external fouling and pores absorbed EPS to reduce internal fouling. The combined effects could improve NdAMO microorganism growth and metabolism activity and finally improved nitrogen removal performance and controlled membrane fouling. These findings could deep the knowledge of NdAMO process and help extend its application potential in environment science and engineering.

Ubiquity, diversity, and activity of comammox Nitrospira in agricultural soils.

The recent discovery of complete ammonia oxidation (comammox) process in a single organism challenged the division of labor between two functional groups in the classical two-step nitrification model. However, the distribution and activity of comammox bacteria in various environments remain largely unknown. This study presented a large-scale investigation of the geographical distribution, phylogenetic diversity, and activity of comammox Nitrospira in typical agricultural soils. Among the 23 samples harvested across China, comammox Nitrospira clade A was ubiquitously detected at 4.14 × 104-1.65 × 107amoA gene copies/g dry soil, with 90% belonging to the subclade A2. The abundance of comammox Nitrospira clade B was two orders of magnitude lower than clade A. In all samples, comammox Nitrospira were 1-2 orders of magnitude less abundant than canonical nitrifiers, and soils with slightly high pH and C/N tended to enrich more comammox Nitrospira. Unlike canonical nitrifiers, comammox Nitrospira had sustained amoA gene transcription regardless of external ammonia supply, indicating their competitive advantage over other nitrifiers under low-ammonia conditions. When fed with 1 mM ammonium for 15 days, comammox Nitrospira in tested soils were enriched 2.36 times higher than those enriched by the same amount of nitrite, indicating their preference to utilizing ammonia as the substrate. DNA-SIP further confirmed the in situ nitrification activity of comammox Nitrospira. This study provided new insights into the broad distribution and diversity of comammox Nitrospira in agricultural soils, which could potentially play an important role in the microbial nitrogen cycle in soils.

Response of FANIR system to starvation stress: "Dormancy".

Anaerobic ammonium oxidation (Anammox) process has been successfully applied in the nitrogen removal from high-strength wastewaters. However, little information is available for its treatment of low-strength wastewaters. In this study, a Famine Anammox NItrogen Removal (FANIR) system was developed to investigate the effect of long-term substrate starvation at the low nitrogen concentration (the influent total nitrogen was set at ∼1 mg/L). The results showed that the response of FANIR system to the starvation stress took on two phases: the functional decline phase (0-54 day) and the functional stabilization phase (62-116 day). Over the two phases, the Nitrogen Removal Rate (NRR) of anammox reactor firstly dropped sharply; and then came to a constant level. The activity and settleability of Anammox Granular Sludge (AnGS) firstly deteriorated seriously, and then stayed in a stable range. The relative abundance of Anaerobic Ammonium Oxidation Bacteria (AnAOB) firstly decreased markedly, and then approached a steady state with the change of dominant genus from Candidatus Brocadia to Candidatus Kuenenia. The abundance of 16S rRNA gene and hzs gene of AnAOB and their transcription level firstly declined largely as well, and then became stable with the 16S rRNA gene, hzs gene, 16S rRNA and hzs-mRNA of AnAOB at 23.9%, 9.1%, 1.2% and 1.0% of the initial value, respectively. To our delight, the behavior of FANIR system in the functional stabilization phase was proved indeed consistent with the feature for AnAOB to enter the dormancy state. These findings are helpful to understand the physiology of AnAOB over the starvation stress and to promote the extension of anammox process to the treatment of low-strength wastewaters.

A secret of high-rate mass transfer in anammox granular sludge: "Lung-like breathing".

The granulation of anaerobic ammonium oxidation (Anammox) biomass can play a key role in developing stable and high-rate working of anammox process. It is important to know the working mechanism of anammox granular sludge (AnGS) for the optimization of reactor performance. In this study, a "lung-like breathing" determinator was invented to investigate the working behavior of AnGS in the bioreactor. The results showed that the AnGS had a regular expansion and contraction phenomenon, which was called "lung-like breathing". With the biological loading rate (BLR) at 0.114 kg-N/(kg-VSS·d), the expansion and contraction amplitude (ExCA) was 1.29 ±â€¯0.05%, and the expansion and contraction frequency (ExCF) was 39.3 ±â€¯1.6 times/h. The AnGS cultivated in a bioreactor with higher nitrogen removal rate (NRR) was found to have the higher ExCA and ExCF when determinated at the same BLR, and the "lung-like breathing" behavior of one type of AnGS was revealed to bear a significantly (p < 0.05) positive correlation with the specific anammox activity (SAA). The mass transfer flux from "lung-like breathing" was far greater than that from molecular diffusion, which was regarded as a vital mechanism for the AnGS to demonstrate its high activity. These findings provided theoretical basis and technical parameters for the optimization of anammox nitrogen removal process.

Sources of anammox granular sludge and their sustainability in treating low-strength wastewater.

Anaerobic ammonium oxidation (anammox) has been widely applied in the treatment of high-strength nitrogen wastewaters. However, few engineering practices were reported to treat low-strength nitrogen wastewaters. In this study, three types of anammox granular sludge (GS) were separately collected from the expanded granular sludge bed (EGSB) reactors treating nitrogen wastewaters at high (H-), moderate (M-) and low (L-) nitrogen loading rates (NLRs), and employed for the treatment of low-strength nitrogen wastewater in sequencing batch advanced nitrogen removal (ANR) systems. The ANR system with M-GS (namely M-ANR system) was most useful. At the initial biomass concentration of 2.43 g-VSS·L-1, cycle length of 8 h and influent total nitrogen (TN) concentration of less than 15 mg·L-1, the performance data were as follows: effluent TN of less than 1 mg·L-1, TN removal efficiency of more than 92.8%, the nitrogen removal rate (NRR) of 0.039 kg-N·m-3·d-1. The efficient performance lasted as long as 46 cycles, indicating the sustainability of the M-ANR system. The advanced microscopic analysis and metagenomic analysis were applied to reveal the successful but non-permanent treatment by the M-ANR system. The long-time lag between biomass decay and sludge activity decay provided a window period for the good performance of M-ANR system. However, the weak support of oligotrophic habitat for anaerobic ammonium oxidizing bacteria community was doomed to the degradation of anammox GS, resulting in gradual loss of their activities. A periodic addition of fresh M-GS or a periodic rejuvenation cultivation in the eutrophic habitat is necessary to achieve a permanent performance.

Characteristics of Microbial Communities and Their Correlation With Environmental Substrates and Sediment Type in the Gas-Bearing Formation of Hangzhou Bay, China.

Shallow gas is a kind of natural gas buried in shallow strata, generally, with methane as the main component, endowing it a potential energy resource while also a potential risk to the safety of ground engineering and environment. Microbial activity is usually regarded as an important driving force to generate shallow gas via metabolizing the environmental substrates. Therefore, the research on the microbial communities will be helpful to reveal the distribution of shallow gas in the gas-bearing formation. In this study, 30 sediment samples below the seabed in Hangzhou Bay (China) from depths of 1.5 m to 55 m were collected to investigate their microbial community, environmental characteristics and sediment type (clay or sand). It turned out that the presence of shallow gas had a good correlation with the distribution of archaea rather than bacteria, with the dominant microbe of Bathyarchaeota, Thaumarchaeota, and Euryarchaeota in the formation. Methanosarcinaceae and ANME-1a with the capacity of methane metabolism occupied high proportions. The correlation analysis and redundancy analysis (RDA) suggested that ammonium was a key environmental substrate to indicate the microbial community in the formation. The sediment type was proposed to shape environmental substrates in the formation, thus further affecting the microbial communities. The clay strata were demonstrated to have an important role in the generation and distribution of shallow gas, and more attention should be paid in terms of its resource discovery and engineering safety assessment.

Color characterization of anammox granular sludge: Chromogenic substance, microbial succession and state indication.

Vision is a direct and convenient way to get information, and color characteristics are important visual information to identify objects. In this study, the L*a*b* color space was introduced for the first time to digitize the surface color of anammox granular sludge (AnGS). Three AnGSs under typical biological loading rates were chosen and the color value a*/b* was found to have a positive correlation with the specific anammox activity and the biological loading rate of AnGS. Cytochrome c was detected to be the key chromogenic substance determining the red hue of AnGS. The concentration of cytochrome c was highly consistent with the abundance of anammox bacteria. Nitrospira was observed to compete with Candidatus Kuenenia for nitrite under survival state, resulting in the obvious decrease of a* value; while the growth of sulfur-related Limnobacter and Thiobacillus was enhanced under starvation state, leading to the production of Fe-S compounds covering over the surface and decrease of a* and b* value simultaneously. The unique color characteristics of AnGS were evaluated as a visual indicator to serve the on-line control and better judgement of anammox process.

Impacts of electron donor and acceptor on the performance of electrotrophic denitrification.

Electrotrophic denitrification is a novel nitrogen removal technique. In this study, the performance and the mechanism of electrotrophic denitrification were investigated at different nitrate concentrations and current intensities. The results showed that the performance of electrotrophic denitrification was good with a sludge loading of 0.39 kg N/kg VSS day. The half-saturation constant for nitrate-N was 1894.03 mg/L. The optimal nitrate-N concentration and current intensity were 1500 mg/L and 20 µA, respectively. Electrotrophic denitrification was defined as the process of direct use of electron for nitrate reduction, and electrotrophic denitrifier was proposed to be the microbe of using electricity as energy source directly. The present work will benefit the development and application of electrotrophic denitrification. Graphical abstract ᅟ.