Degradation Pathway of Benzothiazole and Microbial Community Structure in Microbial Electrolysis Cells

In this study, benzothiazole was entirely mineralized by an up-flow internal circulation microbial electrolysis reactor. The bioelectrochemical system was operated at ambient temperature under continuous-flow mode. The analysis of metabolite which was extracted by HPLC-MS from the bioreactor indicated that benzothiazole derivative(BTH) was firstly converted into 2-hydroxybenzothiazole in the microbial electrolysis cell(MEC) and then mineralized within three steps, i.e., the fracture of thiazole-ring through a series of oxidation and hydrolysis, the deamination and hydroxylation of 2-aminobenzenesulfonic acid, and the mineralization of various carboxylic acids to COand HO. Bacterial community analysis indicated that the applied electric field could selectively enrich certain species and the dominate bacteria on the electrodes belonged to Proteobacteria, Bacteroidetes, and Firmicutes. Results show that MEC can improve the degradation efficiency of BTH in wastewater, enable the microbiological reactor to satisfy the requirements of high loading rate, thereby fulfilling the scale-up of whole process in the future.