Microbial community shift in a suspended stuffing biological reactor with pre-attached aerobic denitrifier

Abstract: Bioaugmentation is substantially determined by pre-attached communities in biological stuffing systems. However, the inevitable changes of microbial community shift occurred between pre-attached microorganisms on stuffing material and other existing communities in wastewater. Targeting at nitrogen removal in aerobic denitrification reactors, biological augmentation was built by polyurethane supporting material and aerobic denitrification bacteria of Pseudomonas stutzeri strains were primarily colonized. The total nitrogen removal reached a high efficiency of 77 ± 6%, resulting from a relative high nitrate removal (90%) and a low nitrite production of 24 mg l⁻¹. The nitrate removal was kept 10% higher using preattached strains than that using wastewater communities. During the bioaugmentation process, abundant bacteria related to nitrogen removal were evolutively enriched to compete with preattached Pseudomonas stutzeri. The most abundant bacteria growing up in the biofilm belonged to various Classes of Proteobacteria Phylum. A noticeable nitrite production with a relative low TN removal efficiency occurred when Brucella sp. and Brevundimonas sp. were simultaneously enriched in place of Pseudomonas, because Brevundimonas also accumulated nitrite during denitrification under an aerobic condition. The results indicated that pre-attached denitrifiers in comprehensive communities on stuffing material can be established for the efficient nitrogen and COD removal in aerobic denitrification reactors. Graphical Abstract: [Figure not available: see fulltext.].