Abstract
Biomass samples from a structured-bed reactor subjected to recirculation and intermittent aeration (SBRRIA) were analyzed to investigate the bacterial community shift along with the changes in the C/N ratio. The C/N ratios tested were 7.6 ± 1.0 (LNC) and 2.9 ± 0.4 (HNC). The massive sequencing analyses revealed that the microbial community adjusted itself to different organic and nitrogenous applied loads, with no harm to reactor performance regarding COD and Total-N removal. Under LNC, conventional nitrification and heterotrophic denitrification steered the process, as indicated by the detection of microorganisms affiliated with Nitrosomonadaceae, Nitrospiraceae, and Rhodocyclaceae families. However, under HNC, the C/N ratio strongly affected the microbial community, resulting in the prevalence of members of Saprospiraceae, Chitinophagaceae, Xanthomonadaceae, Comamonadaceae, Bacillaceae, and Planctomycetaceae. These families include bacteria capable of using organic matter derived from cell lysis, ammonia-oxidizers under low DO, heterotrophic nitrifiers–aerobic denitrifiers, and non-isolated strains of Anammox. The DO profile confirmed that the stratification in aerobic, anoxic, and anaerobic zones enabled the establishment of different nitrogen degradation pathways, including the Anammox.
Graphic abstract






Similar content being viewed by others
Explore related subjects
Discover the latest articles and news from researchers in related subjects, suggested using machine learning.References
Liu Y, Shi H, Xia L et al (2010) Study of operational conditions of simultaneous nitrification and denitrification in a Carrousel oxidation ditch for domestic wastewater treatment. Bioresour Technol 101:901–906. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biortech.2009.09.015
Chiu Y-C, Lee L-L, Chang C-N, Chao AC (2007) Control of carbon and ammonium ratio for simultaneous nitrification and denitrification in a sequencing batch bioreactor. Int Biodeterior Biodegradation 59:1–7. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ibiod.2006.08.001
Moura RB, Damianovic MHRZ, Foresti E (2012) Nitrogen and carbon removal from synthetic wastewater in a vertical structured-bed reactor under intermittent aeration. J Environ Manage 98:163–167. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2012.01.009
Jin R-C, Yang G-F, Yu J-J, Zheng P (2012) The inhibition of the Anammox process: a review. Chem Eng J 197:67–79. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cej.2012.05.014
Pereira AD, Cabezas A, Etchebehere C et al (2017) Microbial communities in anammox reactors: a review. Environ Technol Rev 6:74–93. https://doi.org/10.1080/21622515.2017.1304457
Jenni S, Vlaeminck SE, Morgenroth E, Udert KM (2014) Successful application of nitritation/anammox towastewater with elevated organic carbon to ammonia ratios. Water Res 49:316–326. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.watres.2013.10.073
Chen WH, Chiang YA, Huang YT et al (2017) Tertiary nitrogen removal using simultaneous partial nitrification, anammox and denitrification (SNAD) process in packed bed reactor. Int Biodeterior Biodegrad 120:36–42. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ibiod.2017.01.037
de Almeida RGB, dos Santos CED, Lüders TC et al (2018) Nitrogen removal by simultaneous partial nitrifi cation, anammox and denitrifi cation (SNAD) in a structured-bed reactor treating animal feed processing wastewater: Inhibitory effects and bacterial community. Int Biodeterior Biodegradation 133:108–115. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ibiod.2018.06.019
Liang Y, Li D, Zhang X et al (2014) Microbial characteristics and nitrogen removal of simultaneous partial nitrification, anammox and denitrification (SNAD) process treating low C/N ratio sewage. Bioresour Technol 169:103–109. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biortech.2014.06.064
Sánchez Guillén JA, Yimman Y, Lopez Vazquez CM et al (2014) Effects of organic carbon source, chemical oxygen demand/N ratio and temperature on autotrophic nitrogen removal. Water Sci Technol 69:2079–2084. https://doi.org/10.2166/wst.2014.128
Chamchoi N, Nitisoravut S, Schmidt JE (2008) Inactivation of ANAMMOX communities under concurrent operation of anaerobic ammonium oxidation (ANAMMOX) and denitrification. Bioresour Technol 99:3331–3336. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biortech.2007.08.029
Moura RB, Santos CED, Okada DY et al (2018) Carbon-nitrogen removal in a structured-bed reactor (SBRRIA) treating sewage: operating conditions and metabolic perspectives. J Environ Manage 224:19–28. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2018.07.014
Silva BG, Damianovic MHRZ, Foresti E (2018) Effects of intermittent aeration periods on a structured-bed reactor continuously fed on the post-treatment of sewage anaerobic effluent. Bioprocess Biosyst Eng 20:1–6. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00449-018-1940-1
Oliveira EP, Souza TSO, Okada DY et al (2020) Effect of air flow, intermittent aeration time and recirculation ratio in the hydrodynamic behavior of a structured bed reactor. Chem Eng J 394:124988. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cej.2020.124988
Barana AC, Lopes DD, Martins TH et al (2013) Nitrogen and organic matter removal in an intermittently aerated fixed-bed reactor for post-treatment of anaerobic effluent from a slaughterhouse wastewater treatment plant. J Environ Chem Eng 1:453–459. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jece.2013.06.015
Wosiack PA, Lopes DD, Rissato Zamariolli Damianovic MH et al (2015) Removal of COD and nitrogen from animal food plant wastewater in an intermittently-aerated structured-bed reactor. J Environ Manage 154:145–150. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2015.02.026
Santos CED, Moura RB, Damianovic MHRZ, Foresti E (2016) Influence of COD/N ratio and carbon source on nitrogen removal in a structured-bed reactor subjected to recirculation and intermittent aeration (SBRRIA). J Environ Manage 166:519–524. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2015.10.054
Park S, Yu J, Byun I et al (2011) Microbial community structure and dynamics in a mixotrophic nitrogen removal process using recycled spent caustic under different loading conditions. Bioresour Technol 102:7265–7271. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biortech.2011.04.091
Fitzgerald CM, Camejo P, Oshlag JZ, Noguera DR (2015) Ammonia-oxidizing microbial communities in reactors with efficient nitrification at low-dissolved oxygen. Water Res 70:38–51. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.watres.2014.11.041
Van de Graaf AA, De BP, Robertson LA et al (1996) Autotrophic growth of anaerobic am monium-oxidizing micro-organisms in a fluidized bed reactor. Microbiology 142:2187–2196
Revsbech NP (1989) An oxygen microsensor with a guard cathode. Limnol Oceanogr 34:474–478. https://doi.org/10.4319/lo.1989.34.2.0474
Griffiths RI, Whiteley AS, O’Donnell AG, Bailey MJ (2000) Rapid method for coextraction of DNA and RNA from natural environments for analysis of ribosomal DNA- and rRNA-based microbial community composition. Appl Environ Microbiol 66:5488–5491. https://doi.org/10.1128/AEM.66.12.5488-5491.2000
Edgar RC (2013) UPARSE: highly accurate OTU sequences from microbial amplicon reads. Nat Methods 10:996–998. https://doi.org/10.1038/nmeth.2604
Bolger AM, Lohse M, Usadel B (2014) Trimmomatic: A flexible trimmer for Illumina sequence data. Bioinformatics 30:1–7. https://doi.org/10.1093/bioinformatics/btu170
Edgar RC, Haas BJ, Clemente JC et al (2011) UCHIME improves sensitivity and speed of chimera detection. Bioinformatics 27:2194–2200. https://doi.org/10.1093/bioinformatics/btr381
Schloss PD, Westcott SL, Ryabin T et al (2009) Introducing mothur: open-source, platform-independent, community-supported software for describing and comparing microbial communities. Appl Environ Microbiol 75:7537–7541. https://doi.org/10.1128/AEM.01541-09
Pruesse E, Quast C, Knittel K et al (2007) SILVA: a comprehensive online resource for quality checked and aligned ribosomal RNA sequence data compatible with ARB. Nucleic Acids Res 35:7188–7196. https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkm864
Krzywinski M, Schein J, Birol I et al (2009) Circos: an information aesthetic for comparative genomics. Genome Res 19:1639–1645. https://doi.org/10.1101/gr.092759.109
Brenner DJ, Krieg NR, Staley JT (2005) The Proteobacteria (volume 2). In: G. M. Garrity (ed) Bergey’s Manual of Systematic Bacteriology. Springer, New York
Daims H, Nielsen JL, Nielsen PH et al (2001) In situ characterization of Nitrospira-like nitrite-oxidizing bacteria active in wastewater treatment plants. Appl Environ Microbiol 67:5273–5284. https://doi.org/10.1128/AEM.67.11.5273
Show KY, Lee DJ, Pan X (2013) Simultaneous biological removal of nitrogen-sulfur-carbon: recent advances and challenges. Biotechnol Adv 31:409–420. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biotechadv.2012.12.006
Jetten MS, Op den Camp H, Kuenen G, Strous M (2010) "Candidatus Brocadiales” ord. nov. In: Krieg NR, Ludwig W, Whitman WB et al (eds) Bergey’s Manual of Systematic Bacteriology, Second. Springer, Ne York, pp 918–926
Lotti T, Van Der SWRL, Kleerebezem R et al (2012) The effect of nitrite inhibition on the anammox process The effect of nitrite inhibition on the anammox process. Water Res 46:2559–2569. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.watres.2012.02.011
Gonzalez-Gil G, Sougrat R, Behzad AR et al (2015) Microbial community composition and ultrastructure of granules from a full-scale anammox reactor. Environ Microbiol 70:118–131. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00248-014-0546-7
Park H, Rosenthal A, Ramalingam K et al (2010) Linking community profiles, gene expression and N-removal in anammox bioreactors treating municipal anaerobic digestion reject water. Environ Sci Technol 44:6110–6116
Gonzalez-Martinez A, Rodriguez-Sanchez A, Lotti T et al (2015) Bacterial community structure of a lab-scale anammox membrane bioreactor. Biotechnol Prog 31:186–193. https://doi.org/10.1002/btpr.1995
Cao S, Du R, Li B et al (2016) High-throughput profiling of microbial community structures in an ANAMMOX-UASB reactor treating high-strength wastewater. Appl Microbiol Biotechnol 100:6457–6467. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-016-7427-6
Hoshino T, Terahara T, Yamada K et al (2006) Long-term monitoring of the succession of a microbial community in activated sludge from a circulation flush toilet as a closed system. FEMS Microbiol Ecol 55:459–470. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1574-6941.2005.00047.x
Drury B, Rosi-Marshall E, Kelly JJ (2013) Wastewater treatment effluent reduces the abundance and diversity of benthic bacterial communities in urban and suburban rivers. Appl Environ Microbiol 79:1897–1905. https://doi.org/10.1128/AEM.03527-12
Zhang B, Xu X, Zhu L (2018) Activated sludge bacterial communities of typical wastewater treatment plants: distinct genera identification and metabolic potential differential analysis. AMB Express 8:. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1186/s13568-018-0714-0
McIlroy SJ, Nielsen PH (2014) The family saprospiraceae. In: Rosenberg E, DeLong EF, Lory S et al (eds) The Prokaryotes: Other Major Lineages of Bacteria and The Archaea. Springer, Berlin Heidelberg, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 863–889
Kim MK, Jung H-Y (2007) Chitinophaga terrae sp. nov., isolated from soil. Int J Syst Evol Microbiol 57:1721–1724. https://doi.org/10.1099/ijs.0.64964-0
Krieg NR, Staley JT, Brown DR, et al (2010) The Bacteroidetes, Spirochaetes, Tenericutes (Mollicutes), Acidobacteria, Fibrobacteres, Fusobacteria, Dictyoglomi, Gemmatimonadetes, Lentisphaerae, Verrucomicrobia, Chlamydiae, and Planctomycetes (volume 4). In: Bergey’s Manual of Systematic Bacteriology. NewYork, p 949
Wang D, Li T, Huang K et al (2019) Roles and correlations of functional bacteria and genes in the start-up of simultaneous anammox and denitrification system for enhanced nitrogen removal. Sci Total Environ 655:1355–1363. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2018.11.321
Wang J, Lei Z, Wang L et al (2020) Insight into using up-flow anaerobic sludge blanket-anammox to remove nitrogen from an anaerobic membrane reactor during mainstream wastewater treatment. Bioresour Technol 314:123710. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biortech.2020.123710
Dolinšek J, Lagkouvardos I, Wanek W et al (2013) Interactions of nitrifying bacteria and heterotrophs: Identification of a Micavibrio-like putative predator of Nitrospira spp. Appl Environ Microbiol 79:2027–2037. https://doi.org/10.1128/AEM.03408-12
Okada DY, Costa RB, de Garcia C, CB, et al (2020) Anoxic microbial community robustness under variation of hydraulic retention time and availability of endogenous electron donors. Appl Biochem Biotechnol 192:443–454. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12010-020-03327-5
Willems A (2014) The family comamonadaceae. In: Rosenberg E, DeLong EF, Lory S et al (eds) The Prokaryotes: alphaproteobacteria and betaproteobacteria. Springer-Verlag, Berlin Heidelberg, Berlin, pp 778–851
Chen Q, Ni J (2011) Heterotrophic nitrification-aerobic denitrification by novel isolated bacteria. J Ind Microbiol Biotechnol 38:1305–1310. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10295-010-0911-6
Xia J, Ye L, Ren H, Zhang XX (2018) Microbial community structure and function in aerobic granular sludge. Appl Microbiol Biotechnol 102:3967–3979. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-018-8905-9
Khramenkov SV, Kozlov MN, Kevbrina MV et al (2013) A novel bacterium carrying out anaerobic ammonium oxidation in a reactor for biological treatment of the filtrate of wastewater fermented sludge. Microbiology 82:628–636. https://doi.org/10.1134/S002626171305007X
Dedysh SN, Kulichevskaya IS, Beletsky A V, et al (2020) Lacipirellula parvula gen . nov ., sp . nov ., representing a lineage of planctomycetes widespread in low-oxygen habitats , description of the family Lacipirellulaceae fam . nov . and proposal of the orders. Syst Appl Microbiol 43:126050. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.syapm.2019.126050
Rios-Del Toro EE, Cervantes FJ (2019) Anaerobic ammonium oxidation in marine environments: contribution to biogeochemical cycles and biotechnological developments for wastewater treatment. Rev Environ Sci Biotechnol 18:11–27. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11157-018-09489-3
Yoshinaga I, Amano T, Yamagishi T et al (2011) Distribution and diversity of anaerobic ammonium oxidation (anammox) bacteria in the sediment of a eutrophic freshwater Lake, Lake kitaura, Japan. Microbes Environ 26:189–197. https://doi.org/10.1264/jsme2.ME10184
Yue X, Yu G, Liu Z et al (2018) Start-up of the completely autotrophic nitrogen removal over nitrite process with a submerged aerated biological filter and the effect of inorganic carbon on nitrogen removal and microbial activity. Bioresour Technol 254:347–352. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biortech.2018.01.107
Sànchez-Melsió A, Cáliz J, Balaguer MD et al (2009) Development of batch-culture enrichment coupled to molecular detection for screening of natural and man-made environments in search of anammox bacteria for N-removal bioreactors systems. Chemosphere 75:169–179. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chemosphere.2008.12.017
Egli K, Bosshard F, Werlen C et al (2003) Microbial composition and structure of a rotating biological contactor biofilm treating ammonium-rich wastewater without organic carbon. Microb Ecol 45:419–432. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00248-002-2037-5
Strous M, Jetten M (1997) Effects of Aerobic and Microaerobic Conditions on Anaerobic Ammonium-Oxidizing ( Anammox ) Sludge. 63:2446–2448
Chen H, Liu S, Yang F et al (2009) The development of simultaneous partial nitrification, ANAMMOX and denitrification (SNAD) process in a single reactor for nitrogen removal. Bioresour Technol 100:1548–1554. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biortech.2008.09.003
Daverey A, Su SH, Huang YT et al (2013) Partial nitrification and anammox process: a method for high strength optoelectronic industrial wastewater treatment. Water Res 47:2929–2937. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.watres.2013.01.028
Acknowledgements
The authors gratefully acknowledge financial support from FAPESP (Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo, Brazil) and CNPq (Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico, Brazil) (Processes 2013/15665-8 and 2015/21650-9). The authors especially thank the Technician Antônio Wagner Lamon from Laboratory of Microsensors in the São Carlos School of Engineering (EESC/USP, Brazil) for constructing the DO microsensor and performing this analysis.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Supplementary Information
Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
dos Santos, C.E.D., Costa, R.B., Rabelo, C.A.B.S. et al. Hacking biofilm developed in a structured-bed reactor (SBRRIA) with integrated processes of nitrogen and organic matter removal. Bioprocess Biosyst Eng 44, 1841–1851 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00449-021-02564-0
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00449-021-02564-0


