Efficiency and microbial diversity of aeration solid-phase denitrification process bioaugmented with HN-AD bacteria for the treatment of low C/ N wastewater

To evaluate the simultaneous nitrification and denitrification (SND) performance of the aeration solid-phase denitrification (SPD) process and improve the operating efficiency, aeration SPD process using polybutanediol succinate as carbon source was optimized and the process was bioaugmented with heterotrophic nitrification aerobic denitrification bacteria for the treatment of real wastewater. The results showed that after bioaugmentation, the total nitrogen removal efficiency of the aeration SPD process increased by 50.46 % under condition of dissolved oxygen (DO) 3 mg/L. According to Illumina MiSeq sequencing and correlation analyses, the microbial community can perform SND under the conditions of DO 5 mg and HRT 6 h, but is susceptible to DO. Bioaugmentation mainly affected the carbon source metabolic network with heterotrophic bacteria Methyloversatilis, Thiothrix, and norank_Lentimicrobiaceae as nodes to change the community structure, thereby improving the performance of the functional microbial community. Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes analysis suggested that narB, narG, narH, nirK and narI were the key genes involved in the response to bioaugmentation. This work provides new insights for the application of the SPD process in wastewater treatment.