Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Impact of methionine on a partial-nitritation biofilter

  • Research Article
  • Published:
Environmental Science and Pollution Research Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

It has been demonstrated that an anaerobic digestion process cannot attain an efficient removal of several amino acids, with methionine being one of the most persistent of these. Thus, the effect that methionine amino acid has over the partial-nitritation process with fixed-biofilm configuration in terms of performance and bacterial community dynamics has been investigated. With respect to the performance with no addition, 100 mg/L methionine loading decreased ammonium oxidation efficiency in 60 % and 100 % at concentrations of 300 and 500 mg/L methionine, respectively. Bacterial biomass sharply increased by 30, 65, and 230 % with the addition of 100, 300, and 500 mg/L methionine, respectively. Bacterial community analysis showed that methionine addition supported the proliferation of a diversity of heterotrophic genera, such as Lysobacter and Micavibrio, and reduced the relative abundance of ammonium oxidizing genus Nitrosomonas. This research shows that the addition of methionine affects the performance of the partial-nitritation process. In this sense, amino acids can pose a threat for the of partial-nitritation process treating anaerobic digester supernatant at full-scale implementation.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Bagchi S, Biswas R, Nandy T (2012) Autotrophic ammonia removal processes: ecology to technology. Crit Rev Environ Sci Technol 42:1353–1418

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Cao J, Lai Q, Liu Y, Li G, Shao Z (2014) Ottowia beijingiensis sp. nov., isolated from coking wastewater activated sludge, and emended description of the genus Ottowia. Int J Syst Evol Microbiol 64:963–967

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Chai S, Guo J, Chai Y, Cai J, Gao L (2013) Anaerobic treatment of winery wastewater in moving bed biofilm reactors. Desalin Water Treat 52:1841–1849

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Christensen P, Cook FD (1978) Lysobacter, a new genus of nonfruiting, gliding bacteria with a high base ratio. Int J Syst Evol Microbiol 28:367–393

    Google Scholar 

  • Deckwer W-D, Jahn D, Hempel D, Zeng A-P (2006) Systems biology approaches to bioprocess development. Eng Life Sci 6:455–469

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Dolinsek J, Lagkouvardos I, Wanek W, Wagner M, Daims H (2013) Interactions of nitrifying bacteria and heterotrophs: identification of a Micavibrio-like putative predator of Nitrospira spp. Appl Environ Microbiol 79:2027–2037

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Edgar RC (2010) Search and clustering orders of magnitude faster than BLAST. Bioinformatics 26:2460–2461

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Edgar RC, Haas BJ, Clemente JC, Quince C, Knight R (2011) UCHIME improves sensitivity and speed of chimera detection. Bioinformatics 27:2194–2200

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Fan L, McElroy K, Thomas T (2012) Reconstruction of ribosomal RNA genes from metagenomic data. PLoS One 7:e39948

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Fukuda W, Kimura T, Araki S, Miyoshi Y, Atomi H, Imanaka T (2013) Lysobacter oligotrophicus sp. nov., isolated from an Antarctic freshwater lake in Antarctica. Int J Syst Evol Microbiol 63:3313–3318

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Gonzalez-Martinez A, Calderon K, Albuquerque A, Hontoria E, Gonzalez-Lopez J, Guisado IM, Osorio F (2013) Biological and technical study of a partial-SHARON reactor at laboratory scale: effect of hydraulic retention time. Bioproc Biosyst Eng 36:174–184

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gonzalez-Martinez A, Rodriguez-Sanchez A, Martinez-Toledo MV, Garcia-Ruiz M-J, Hontoria E, Osorio-Robles F, Gonzalez-Lopez J (2014) Effect of ciprofloxacin antibiotic on the partial-nitritation process and bacterial community structure of a submerged biofilter. Sci Total Environ 476–477:276–287

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gonzalez-Martinez A, Rodriguez-Sanchez A, Munoz-Palazon B, Garcia-Ruiz MJ, Osorio F, Van Loosdrecht MCM, Gonzalez J (2015) Microbial community analysis of a full-scale DEMON bioreactor. Bioproc Biosyst Eng 38:499–508

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Higgins MJ, Adams G, Chen Y-C, Erdal Z, Forbes RH Jr, Glindemann D, Hargreaves JR, McEwen D, Murthy SN, Novak JT, Witherspoon J (2008) Role of protein, amino acids, and enzyme activity on odor production from anaerobic digested and dewatered biosolids. Water Env Res 80:127–135

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Jafari H, Bagheri R, Forghani G, Esmaeili M (2015) The consequences of disposing wastewater in an endorheic wetland in southwest of Iran. Environ Monit Asses 187:357

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kaewpipat K, Grady CPL Jr (2002) Microbial population dynamics in laboratory-scale activated sludge reactors. Water Sci Technol 46:19–27

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Kindaichi T, Yuri S, Ozaki N, Ohashi A (2012) Ecophysiological role and function of uncultured Chloroflexi in an anammox reactor. Water Sci Technol 66:2556–2561

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Koops H-P, Bottcher B, Moller UC, Pommerening-Roser A, Stehr G (1991) Classification of eight new species of ammonia-oxidizing bacteria: Nitrosomonas communis sp. nov., Nitrosomonas ureae sp. nov., Nitrosomonas aestuarii sp. nov., Nitrosomonas marina sp. nov., Nitrosomonas nitrosa sp. nov., Nitrosomonas eutropha sp. nov., Nitrosomonas oligotropha sp. nov. and Nitrosomonas halophila sp. nov. J Gen Microbiol 137:1689–1699

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Kruglova A, Ahlgren P, Korhonen N, Rantanen P, Mikola A, Vahala R (2014) Biodegradation of ibuprofen, diclofenac and carbamazepine in nitrifying activated sludge under 12°C temperature conditions. Sci Tot Environ 499:394–401

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Lyon DY, Brown D, Sundstrom ER, Alvarez PJJ (2008) Assessing the antibiofouling potential of a fullerene-coated surface. Int Biodegrad Biodeter 62:475–478

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Ma F, Li A, Li B, Cui Z, Shi C, Zhou B (2015) Prolonged starvation and subsequent recovery of nitrification process in a simulated photovoltaic aeration SBR. Environ Sci Poll Res doi:10.1007/s11356-015-4246-8

  • Mosquera-Corral A, Gonzalez F, Campos JL, Mendez R (2005) Partial nitrification in a SHARON reactor in the presence of salts and organic compounds. Proc Biochem 40:3109–3118

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Mußmann M, Ribot M, von Schiller D, Merbt SN, Augspurger C, Karwautz C, Winkel M, Battin TJ, Marti E, Daims H (2013) Colonization of freshwater biofilms by nitrifying bacteria from activated sludge. FEMS Microbiol Ecol 85:104–115

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nozhevnikova AN, Simankova MV, Litti YV (2012) Application of the microbial process of anaerobic ammonium oxidation (anammox) in biotechnological wastewater treatment. Appl Biochem Biotechnol 48:667–684

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Park JH, Kim R, Aslam Z, Jeon CO, Chung YR (2008) Lysobacter capsici sp. nov., with antimicrobial activity, isolated from the rhizosphere of pepper, and emended description of the genus Lysobacter. Int J Syst Evol Microbiol 58:387–392

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Park J, Park S, Kim M (2014) Anaerobic degradation of amino acids generated from the hydrolysis of sewage sludge. Environ Technol 35:1133–1139

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Rodriguez-R LM, Konstantinidis KT (2014) Nonpareil: a redundancy-based approach to assess the level of coverage in metagenomic datasets. Bioinformatics 30:629–635

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Rodriguez-Sanchez A, Gonzalez-Martinez A, Martinez-Toledo M, Garcia-Ruiz M, Osorio F, Gonzalez-Lopez J (2014) The effect of influent characteristics and operational conditions over the performance and microbial community structure of partial nitritation reactors. Water 6:1905–1924

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Simoes LC, Simoes M, Vieira MJ (2010) Influence of the diversity of bacterial isolates from drinking water on resistance of biofilms to disinfection. Appl Environ Microbiol 76:6673–6679

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Sri Shalini S, Joseph K (2012) Nitrogen management in landfill leachate: application of SHARON, ANAMMOX and combined SHARON–ANAMMOX process. Waste Manag 32:2385–2400

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Sri Shalini S, Joseph K (2013) Start-up of the SHARON and ANAMMOX process in landfill bioreactors using aerobic and anaerobic ammonium oxidizing biomass. Biores Technol 179:474–485

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sudarno U, Winter J, Gallert C (2011) Effect of varying salinity, temperature, ammonia and nitrous acid concentrations on nitrification of saline wastewater in fixed-bed reactors. Biores Technol 102:5665–5673

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Van Dongen U, Jetten MSM, Van Loosdrecht MCM (2001) The SHARON-Anammox process for treatment of ammonium rich wastewater. Water Sci Technol 44:153–160

    Google Scholar 

  • Waheed H, Hashmi I, Naveed AK, Khan SJ (2013) Molecular detection of microbial community in a nitrifying-denitrifying activated sludge system. Int Biodeterior Biodegrad 85:527–532

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Wang S, Peng Y, Ma B, Wang S, Zhu G (2015) Anaerobic ammonium oxidation in traditional municipal wastewater plants with low-strength ammonium loading: Widespread but overlooked. Water Res 84:66–75

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Weber SD, Ludwig W, Schleifer K-H, Fried J (2007) Microbial composition and structure of aerobic granular sewage sludge. Appl Environ Microbiol 73:6233–6240

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Wood DE, Salzberg SL (2014) Kraken: ultrafast metagenomic sequence classification using exact alignments. Genome Biol 15:R46

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Xu X-Y, Feng L-J, Zhu L, Xu J, Ding W, Qi H-Y (2012) Biofilm formation and microbial community analysis of the simulated river bioreactor for contaminated source water remediation. Environ Sci Poll Res 19:1584–1593

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Yu Q, Wang H-Z, Li Y, Shao J-C, Liang X-M, Jeppesen E, Wang H-J (2015) Effect of high nitrogen concentrations on the growth of submersed macrophytes at moderate phosphorous concentrations. Water Res 83:385–395

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Zeshan, Karthikeyan OP, Visvanathan C (2012) Effect of C/N ratio and ammonia-N accumulation in a pilot-scale thermophilic dry anaerobic digester. Bioresour Technol 113:294–302

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Civil Engineering, School of Civil Engineering, Campus of Fuentenueva, University of Granada, s/n, 18071, Granada, Spain

    Alejandro Gonzalez-Martinez, Maria Jesus Garcia-Ruiz & Francisco Osorio

  2. Institute of Water Research, University of Granada, Calle Ramon y Cajal 4, 18071, Granada, Spain

    Alejandro Rodriguez-Sanchez & Jesus Gonzalez-Lopez

Authors
  1. Alejandro Gonzalez-Martinez
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Alejandro Rodriguez-Sanchez
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Maria Jesus Garcia-Ruiz
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Francisco Osorio
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Jesus Gonzalez-Lopez
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Alejandro Gonzalez-Martinez.

Ethics declarations

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Additional information

Responsible editor: Gerald Thouand

Electronic supplementary material

Supplementary material referred to this article can be found in the following link: http://www.springer.com/environment/journal/11356.

ESM 1

(DOCX 148 kb)

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Gonzalez-Martinez, A., Rodriguez-Sanchez, A., Garcia-Ruiz, M.J. et al. Impact of methionine on a partial-nitritation biofilter. Environ Sci Pollut Res 23, 6651–6660 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-015-5889-1

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-015-5889-1

Keywords

Search

Navigation