High selenium concentrations can have detrimental health effects on human and non-human animals alike and adversely affect the health of ecosystems, in general. Waters are considered impaired when the selenium concentration is as low as 5 ppb, 10 times lower than the current drinking water standard in the United States. In this work, the ability of microorganisms to affect the oxidation state of selenium oxyanions was studied. The impact of microbial communities obtained from an inoculum from a wastewater treatment plant on selenate and selenite removal was quantified in the presence and absence of iron-coated zeolites. Batch experiments indicate that the concentration of both selenite and selenate can be substantially reduced within days and that selenite removal occurs more readily compared to selenate. Aqueous supernatant samples were analyzed at the end of the experiments using HPLC-ICP-MS to determine the aqueous selenium speciation. Even in the selenate reactors no selenite was detected, an observation consistent with direct reduction of selenate to elemental selenium.  The taxonomy of the microbial cultures was determined using DNA and PCoA techniques and the results indicate that the microbial ecology depends on selenium concentration and is different from the microbial ecology in the initial wastewater sample inoculum. The presence of zeolites does not appear to affect the microbial ecology substantially. These results have significant implications for the transformation and therefore fate and transport of selenium in the environment.

Microbial selenium transformation in the presence and absence of iron-coated zeolites

Macromolecular Chemistry: The Second Century

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ACS Spring 2020 National Meeting & Expo

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.