Chemical
absorption–biological reduction based on Fe(II)EDTA
is a promising technology to remove nitric oxide (NO) from flue gases.
However, limited effort has been made to enable direct energy recovery
from NO through production of nitrous oxide (N2O) as a
potential renewable energy rather than greenhouse gas. In this work,
the enhanced energy recovery in the form of N2O via biological
NO reduction was investigated by conducting short-term and long-term
experiments at different Fe(II)EDTA–NO and organic carbon levels.
The results showed both NO reductase and N2O reductase
were inhibited at Fe(II)EDTA–NO concentration up to 20 mM,
with the latter being inhibited more significantly, thus facilitating
N2O accumulation. Furthermore, N2O accumulation
was enhanced under carbon-limiting conditions because of electron
competition during short-term experiments. Up to 47.5% of NO–N
could be converted to gaseous N2O–N, representing
efficient N2O recovery. Fe(II)EDTA–NO reduced microbial
diversity and altered the community structure toward Fe(II)EDTA–NO-reducing
bacteria-dominated culture during long-term experiments. The most
abundant bacterial genus Pseudomonas, which was able to resist the toxicity of Fe(II)EDTA–NO,
was significantly enriched, with its relative abundance increased
from 1.0 to 70.3%, suggesting Pseudomonas could be the typical microbe for the energy recovery technology
in NO-based denitrification.