Observations of microbial community changes in full-scale wastewater treatment plants are rarely available, and it has been long believed that in such a large system it takes time for the microbial community to adapt to new conditions. However, the next generation sequencing techniques make it possible to monitor the microbial community changes in full-scale wastewater treatment plants. As a matter of fact, it turned out that the recovery of microbial community in such a large system was impressively fast. In a full-scale activated sludge bioreactor, the flow rate was increased to 120% of the daily peak flow and kept constant. The microbial community profile in each zone was characterized by 454 pyrosequencing based on the 16s rRNA gene. With such a remarkable flow rate change, the microbial community shifted significantly at the beginning. However, surprisingly, the microbial community structure in each zone was restored to its initial state within five days, as shown in Figure 1. In addition, no significant impact on the effluent quality was observed during the five-day process. The results indicated that full-scale wastewater treatment systems are actually highly adaptive. By introducing high-throughput sequencing techniques, the changes in real-world biological wastewater treatment processes under various conditions can be better understood, which can greatly facilitate the operation of these systems.Figure 1 Microbial community structure changes in each zone of a full-scale activated sludge bioreactor under a significantly (120%) increased flow rate.

What is the magic? Shift and recovery of the microbial community in a full-scale wastewater treatment plant under a significantly increased flow rate

248th National Meeting (2014)

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