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Evaluation of Inoculum Sources for Aerobic Treatment of 2,3,4-Trifluoroaniline During Start-up and Shock

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Abstract

Contamination with fluoroaromatics (FAs), particularly polyfluorinated aniline, is becoming a serious environmental problem worldwide. To shorten the start-up time, and increase the stability of treatment systems, this work focused on the effects of three seeding sources on treatment performances of 2,3,4-trifluoroaniline (2,3,4-TFA) during start-up and shock, as well as the acclimated strategy. After 246–323 days of acclimation in a stepwise feeding according to the inhibition degree, three sequencing batch reactors (SBRs) successfully achieved efficient removal, i.e., 300.00 mg/L of 2,3,4-TFA, with over 95.00% of degradation efficiency and 60.00–80.00% of defluorination rates. The sludge obtained from the fluorizated hydrocarbon wastewater treatment plant(FHS) without prior exposure to fluoroaniline was determined to be optimal, based on the observed shortest start-up time of 246 days, the highest defluorination rate of 70.00–80.00%, the fastest recovery time of 7 days after shock, and the highest microbial diversity with nine dominant bacterial groups. Furthermore, compared with the sludge obtained from pharmaceutical wastewater containing part of municipal wastewater treatment plant(PMS), the seeding source used in treating the comprehensive wastewater in industrial park (CIS) exhibited earlier defluorination reaction, higher defluorination rate and microbial diversity, but lower shock resistance. High-throughput sequencing demonstrated that microbial diversity was dependent on the origin of the inoculum after acclimation. We identified two predominant phyla in PMS, namely, Deinococcus-Thermus (24.43%) and Bacteroidetes (18.44%), whereas these were Acidobacteria and Chloroflexi in FHS and CIS. During the shock of 400 mg/L 2,3,4-TFA, the predominant bacteria norank_f_Blastocatellaceae and norank_f_Methylobacteriaceae disappeared, and the defluorination reaction hardly occurred, indicating that the bacterial genera could contribute to the defluorination reaction.

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Acknowledgments

The authors are thankful to the editor and all the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and suggestions.

Funding

This work was partially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (no. 21607092); the Public Technology Research Program of Zhejiang Province (no. 2017C33229); and the Talent Project of Qu Zhou University (no. XNZQN201506; BSJX201601).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Chemical & Material Engineering, Quzhou University, Quzhou, 324000, People’s Republic of China

    Zhi-Qing Zhao, Xiao-Li Shen, Tu-Cai Zheng & Rui Fan

  2. College of Environment & Resource Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, People’s Republic of China

    Zhi-Qing Zhao

  3. Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Gujrat, Gujrat, 50700, Pakistan

    Ghulam Abbas

  4. Department of Mine, Metallurgy and Geology Engineering, Engineering Division, University of Guanajuato, Gto, 36000, Guanajuato, Mexico

    Yan-Mei Li

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  1. Zhi-Qing Zhao
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Zhao, ZQ., Shen, XL., Zheng, TC. et al. Evaluation of Inoculum Sources for Aerobic Treatment of 2,3,4-Trifluoroaniline During Start-up and Shock. Water Air Soil Pollut 230, 283 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11270-019-4346-z

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