Abstract
Microbially mediated ammonium oxidation is a major process affecting nitrogen transformation and cycling in natural environments. This study investigated whether ion exchange process can affect microbially mediated aerobic oxidation of ammonium in a hyporheic zone (HZ) sediments from the Columbia River at US Department of Energy’s Hanford site, Washington State. Experiments were conducted using synthetic groundwater and river water to investigate their effect on ammonium oxidation. Results indicated that ammonium sorption through ion exchange reactions decreased the rate of ammonium oxidation, apparently resulting from the influence of the ion exchange on dissolved ammonium concentration, thus decreasing the bioavailability of ammonium for microbial oxidation. However, with the decrease in dissolved ammonium concentration, the sorbed ammonium released back to aqueous phase, and became bioavailable so that all the ammonium in the suspensions were oxidized. Our results implied a dynamic change in ammonium oxidation rates in an environment such as at HZ where river water and groundwater with different chemical compositions exchange frequently that can affect ammonium sorption and desorption through ion exchange reactions.
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Funding
This research is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 41572228 and 41521001), and the U.S. DOE, Office of Biological and Environmental Research (BER) as part of the Subsurface Biogeochemical Research (SBF) Program through the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) SBR Science Focus Area Research Project. A Yan would like to acknowledge the fellowship from China Scholarship Council and the support from Zhejiang Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China (No. LY17D030001). C Liu would like to acknowledge additional support from Southern University of Science and Technology (GG01296001) and Shenzhen Science and Technology Innovation Committee (Grand No. ZDSYS201602261932201).
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Yan, A., Liu, C., Liu, Y. et al. Effect of ion exchange on the rate of aerobic microbial oxidation of ammonium in hyporheic zone sediments. Environ Sci Pollut Res 25, 8880–8887 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-018-1217-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-018-1217-x