Bacterial community and filamentous population of industrial wastewater treatment plants in Belgium

AbstractThe discharge of industrial water requires the removal of its pollutants, where biological wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) are the most used systems. Biological WWTPs make use of activated sludge (AS), where bacteria are responsible for the removal of pollutants. However, our knowledge of the microbial communities of industrial plants is limited. Understanding the microbial population is essential to provide solutions to industrial problems such as bulking. The aim of this study was to identify at a high taxonomic resolution the bacterial population of 29 industrial WWTPs using 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing. Our results revealed that the main functional groups were dominated byThauera andZoogloea within denitrifiers,Dechloromonas in phosphate-accumulating organisms, andDefluviicoccus in glycogen-accumulating organisms. The activated sludge characterization indicated that 59% of the industrial plants suffered from bulking sludge, with DSVI values of up to 448 mL g−1. From the bulking cases, 72% corresponded to filamentous bulking withThiothrix as the most abundant filament; meanwhile, the other 28% corresponded to viscous bulking sludge in whichZoogloea was the most abundant genus. Furthermore, the bacterial population did not share a core of taxa across all industrial plants. However, 20 genera were present in at least 50% of the plants comprising the general core, includingThauera,Ca. Competibacter, and several undescribed microorganisms. Moreover, statistical a...
Source: European Journal of Applied Physiology - Category: Physiology Source Type: research