Impact of acclimation methods on microbial communities and performance of anaerobic fluidized bed membrane bioreactors

Abstract

Granular activated carbon was acclimated to different substrates, and then used in an anaerobic fluidized bed membrane bioreactor (AFMBR) to treat diluted domestic wastewater. Acetate acclimation produced the best results.

Wastewater Treatment by Anaerobic Fluidized Membrane Bioreactor

“…They found that coated membrane had higher organic removal efficiency and achieved higher fouling mitigation performance when GAC particles were fluidized. Various fluidizing solid materials, namely activated carbon [36,44,52,66], glass beads [68], silica [43], and polyethylene terephthalate (PET), have been used in AFMBR reactors. Granulated active carbon (GAC) and powdered activated carbon (PAC) have been mostly utilized due to higher mechanical scouring efficiency and pollutant removal capacity.…”

“…Li et al (2017) examined the effect of increased benzothiazole on IAFMBR performance and found that biogas production steadily decreased with the increase in benzothiazole concentration, but methane yield was stable at around 0.31 m 3 CH 4 /kgCOD removed [67]. Interesting results were reported by LaBarge et al (2016) for the treatment of domestic wastewater at ambient temperature [52]. Researchers applied four different acclimation methods on GAC and found that the acclimation of GAC communities to acetate substrate considerably enhance organic removal performance.…”

“…At lower temperatures a reduction in microbial activities and lower hydrolysis of organics are the main drawbacks of anaerobic treatment. AFMBR studies have been mostly performed at ambient temperatures [52,58,62,70] or psychrophilic conditions [12,50,61] while fewer reactors were operated at mesophilic temperatures [46,50,69]. Comparative studies have been conducted to monitor the effect of changes in temperature on AFMBR performance.…”

“…Among them, Proteobacteria are associated with the development of biofilms on the fluidized GAC particles, and Firmicutes accelerate biofouling. Geobacter-and sulfate-reducing bacteria are more abundant on GAC than reactor fluid during the treatment of domestic wastewater [52,54]. The presence of Geobacter is related to the extracellular electron transfer for acetoclastic methanogens and induced abundance of Methanothrix, which is an acetoclastic methanogen in AFMBR [54].…”