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A Bioreactor Culture of Mesophilic Consortia Maintains the Stability of Microbial Community and Accelerates the Regeneration of Ferric Iron

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Abstract

The microbial community composition is crucial for metal extraction from solid waste by bioleaching. However, bioreactor output of bioleachant with a diverse microbial population is a great challenge due to the different growth conditions of each species. This study reports an immobilized bioreactor for the cultivation of mesophilic consortia. The optimal conditions for iron oxidation were pH 1.5, dilution of 0.382 h–1, the temperature of 30°C, and 12 g/L ferrous iron. The coexistence relationship of Acidithiobacillus ferrooxidans, Acidithiobacillus ferrivorans, and Acidiphilium spp. was relatively stable in a wider range of conditions. Further kinetics investigation showed that ferrous iron oxidation fitted well with the substrate free inhibition model of Michaelis−Menten equation below 12 g/L ferrous iron, indicating that the immobilized bioreactor culturing mesophilic consortia slowed down the inhibition process caused by the substrate and end-product. These key features would enable bioreactor design more efficient during industrial applications of biolea-ching.

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Funding

This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (32 100 021).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Life Sciences, Northwest Normal University, 730070, Lanzhou, China

    T. Li

  2. School of Microelectronic, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, China

    R. Liu

  3. School of Minerals Processing and Bioengineering, Central South University, Changsha, China

    H. Zhou

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  1. T. Li
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Correspondence to R. Liu.

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COMPLIANCE WITH ETHICAL STANDARDS

Conflict of interests. The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest. Statement on the welfare of animals. This article does not contain any studies involving animals or human participants.

AUTHORS’ CONTRIBUTIONS

The idea of the study was proposed by T.L. and R.H.L. Experiments were designed and performed by R.H.L.

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Li, T., Liu, R. & Zhou, H. A Bioreactor Culture of Mesophilic Consortia Maintains the Stability of Microbial Community and Accelerates the Regeneration of Ferric Iron. Microbiology 92, 715–724 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1134/S0026261722601543

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1134/S0026261722601543

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