Microbial community structural analysis of an expanded granular sludge bed (EGSB) reactor for beet sugar industrial wastewater (BSIW) treatment

A looming global energy crisis has directly increased biomethanation processes using anaerobic digestion technology. However, much knowledge on the microbial community structure, their distribution within the digester and related functions remains extremely scanty and unavailable in some cases, yet very valuable in the improvement of the anaerobic bioprocesses. Using pyrosequencing technique based on Miseq PE 3000, microbial community population profiles were determined in an operated mesophilic expanded granular sludge bed (EGSB) reactor treating beet sugar industrial wastewater (BSIW) in the laboratory scale. Further, the distribution of the organisms in the lower, middle and upper sections within the reactor was examined. To our knowledge, this kind of analysis of the microbial community in a reactor treating BSIW is the first of its kind. A total of 44,204 non-chimeric reads with average length beyond 450 bp were yielded. Both bacterial and archaeal communities were identified with archaea predominance (60 %) observed in the middle section. Bayesian classifier yielded 164 families with only 0.73 % sequences which could not be classified to any taxa at family level. The overall phylum predominance in the reactor showed Firmicutes, Euryarchaeota, Chloroflexi, Proteobacteria and Bacteroidetes in the descending order. Our results clearly demonstrate a highly diverse microbial community population of an anaerobic reactor treating BSIW, with distinct distribution levels within the reactor.