Abstract
Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) wastewater is characterized by high organic content, unstable water quality and quantity and low biodegradability. In this paper, the hydrolytic acidification reactor—aerobic moving bed biofilm (MBBR) process was used to degrade TCM wastewater. Besides, a small pilot study was conducted. The appropriate operating parameters: hydraulic retention time (HRT) of the hydrolytic reactor was 16 h, HRT of MBBR was 30 h, dissolved oxygen of MBBR was 6 mg/L, sludge return ratio of MBBR was 100%. The hydrolytic reactor was started for 25 days. MBBR was run in series with the hydrolytic reactor after 24 days of separate operation. The start-up of the composite reactor was completed after another 26 days. The average removal efficiencies of chemical oxygen demand and ammonia nitrogen were 92% and 70%. The hydrolytic reactor was effective in decomposing macromolecules and MBBR had a strong ability to degrade pollutants through the excitation-emission-matrix spectra. The evolution pattern of the dominant bacterial genera and the surface morphology of sludge were studied by scanning electron microscopy and high-throughput sequencing analysis. It could be seen that the surface morphology of the biological filler was suitable for the growth and reproduction of microorganisms.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the Young Talent Innovation Project, Harbin University of Commerce (No. 2020CX02). The authors would like to express their sincere thanks for the financial support in the process of accomplishing this study.
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The formulation of the overall research goals and objectives was written by LH and GW. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by ZL, JH, YH and NZ. And ZL wrote the main manuscript text. All authors reviewed the manuscript.
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Huang, L., Li, Z., Wang, G. et al. Composite hydrolytic acidification - aerobic MBBR process for treating traditional Chinese medicine wastewater. Biodegradation 33, 509–528 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10532-022-09995-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10532-022-09995-w