Relationship between microbial community structures and degradation efficiencies in biological contact process on domestic sewage

¹ School of the Environment and Safety Engineering, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang 212013, China
² EInstitute of Life Sciences, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang 212013, China
³ School of Pharmacy, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang 212013, China

^* Corresponding author: tabol@126.com

Abstract

In order to ascertain the characteristics of two different biofilm reactors and its efficiency, the influence of pH, DO and HRT in the clean-up of COD, NH3-N and TP as well as determining the relationship between microbial community structures and its performance of the two biofilm reactors. This study made use of a biological contact oxidation process system in a small-scale experiment to treat domestic sewage. This contemporary study examined the performance of two different fillers thus, BCF and MBBF in removal of organic pollutants from domestic wastewater as a novel technique of BCOP for sewage treatment. Two self-made biological contact biofilm reactors were used for the experiment: BCR (mounted with BCF) and MBBR (mounted with MBBF). After the biological treatment, the COD concentration of effluent could stay below 350 mg/L. The study analyzed the effects of hydraulic residence time (HRT) on COD, ammonia nitrogen (NH3-N), and total phosphorus (TP) as well as the characteristics of each biofilm filler. The optimal HRT was 12 h; at that time, the experimental results indicated that BCF had higher removal efficiency of chemical oxygen demand, ammonia-nitrogen and total phosphorus at 50%, 96%, and 86%, respectively. Great contribution was made by the process by means of improving the biodegradability of domestic sewage and reducing sludge emergence via fermentation in the biological reactor.