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How anaerobic sludge microbiome respond to different concentrations of nitrite, nitrate, and ammonium ions: a comparative analysis

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Abstract

High concentrations of ammonium, nitrite, and nitrate always induce inhibition in anaerobic wastewater treatment. Due to the complexity and vulnerability of the microbial community (especially methanogens) in anaerobic sludge, little is understood about its underlying microbial mechanism under such inhibition. In this study, the shifts of microbial communities in anaerobic sludge under increasing levels of nitrite, nitrate, and ammonium ions were compared. Results show that although half maximal inhibitory concentrations (methanogenesis) were different for nitrite, nitrate, and ammonium ions with EC50 values of 12, 30, and 3000 mg N/L, respectively, bacteria genera Kosmotoga and Brooklawnia dominated in all of the three high-stress inhibitory systems. Network analysis and redundancy analysis (RDA) of the microbial community showed the treatments with nitrate and nitrite ions decreased the modularity of anaerobic microorganisms. RDA showed that specific methanogenic activity was positively related to coenzyme F420 under nitrite inhibition (rp = 0.833, p < 0.05) and closely correlated with viability under nitrate inhibition. Gram-positive and nonmotile Brooklawnia genus showed a negative correlation with physiological characteristics in the ammonia treatments, suggesting its high resistance to ammonia.

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All data generated or analyzed during this study are included in this published article (and its supplementary information file).

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Funding

We gratefully acknowledge financial support from the National Science and Technology Major Project (no. 2017ZX07202003) and the National Science & Technology Support Program of China (no. 2014BAC08B05).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Pollution Control and Resource Reuse, School of Environment, Nanjing University, Nanjing, 210023, China

    Runhua Su, Lina Zhou, Lili Ding, Yanan Shuang, Lin Ye, Haidong Hu, Haijun Ma & Hongqiang Ren

  2. School of Environmental and Civil Engineering, Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Anaerobic Biotechnology, Jiangsu Engineering Laboratory for Biomass Energy and Carbon Reduction Technology, Jiangnan University, Wuxi, 214122, China

    Bo Fu

  3. National Research Base of Intelligent Manufacturing Service, Chongqing Technology and Business University, Chongqing, 400067, China

    Huimin Fu

Authors
  1. Runhua Su
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  2. Lina Zhou
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  3. Lili Ding
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  4. Bo Fu
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  6. Yanan Shuang
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  7. Lin Ye
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  8. Haidong Hu
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  9. Haijun Ma
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  10. Hongqiang Ren
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Contributions

Runhua Su and Lina Zhou contributed to formal analysis, investigation, data curation, and writing—original draft; Bo Fu, Huimin Fu, and Yanan Shuang contributed to methodology and validation; Lin Ye and Haijun Ma contributed to resources, supervision, and visualization; Haidong Hu and Hongqiang Ren contributed to writing—review and editing; Lili Ding contributed to software, conceptualization, resources, writing—review and editing, visualization, and supervision.

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Correspondence to Lili Ding.

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Runhua Su and Lina Zhou contributed equally to all aspects of conceptualizing planning, sample and data collection, data analysis, and preparation of the manuscript

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Su, R., Zhou, L., Ding, L. et al. How anaerobic sludge microbiome respond to different concentrations of nitrite, nitrate, and ammonium ions: a comparative analysis. Environ Sci Pollut Res 30, 49026–49037 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-023-25704-3

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