Kinetics of phenol and m-cresol biodegradation by an indigenous mixed microbial culture isolated from a sewage treatment plant

An acclimatized mixed microbial culture,predominantly Pseudomonas sp.,was enriched from a sewage treatment plant,and its potential to simultaneously degrade mixtures of phenol and m-cresol was investigated during its growth in batch shake flasks.A 22 full factorial design with the two substrates at two different levels and different initial concentration ranges(low and high),was employed to carry out the biodegradation experiments.The substrates phenol and m-cresol were completely utilized within 21 h when ...

Comparative study of polyhydroxyalkanoates production from acidified and anaerobically treated brewery wastewater using enriched mixed microbial culture

The production of polyhydroxyalkanoates(PHA) from wastewaters using microbial mixed cultures(MMC) has been attracting increased interest because of PHA's biodegradability characteristics. Production of PHA by an MMC enriched with PHA-accumulating bacteria was compared using anaerobically treated and acidified brewery wastewaters under various feeding strategies, namely pulse and batch feed addition. To obtain an enriched MMC, a sequencing batch reactor was inoculated with activated sludge fed with acetate and subjected to aerobic dynamic feeding. The enriched MMC was able to accumulate PHA up to 72.6% of cell dry weight(CDW) with pulse addition of acetate controlled by the dissolved oxygen(DO) concentration in the reactor. In a batch accumulation experiment with acetate,the PHA content achieved(28.5% CDW) was less than that of the pulse feeding strategy with the same amount of acetate(～2000 mg C/L). Using anaerobically treated and acidified brewery wastewater fed in pulses, the maximum PHA accumulated by the enriched MMC was similar for both wastewaters(45% CDW), in spite of the higher volatile fatty acid concentration in acidified brewery wastewater. The pulse feed addition controlled by the DO concentration was difficult to implement for wastewater as compared to acetate because the difference in DO concentration between substrate availability and depletion was low. For the batch addition of acidified wastewater, a slightly lower PHA content(39%CDW) was obtained. These results show that both brewery wastewaters can be utilized for PHA production with a similar maximum PHA storage capacity.

Effects of sludge retention time,carbon and initial biomass concentrations on selection process:From activated sludge to polyhydroxyalkanoate accumulating cultures

Four sequence batch reactors（SBRs） fed by fermented sugar cane wastewater were continuously operated under the aerobic dynamic feeding（ADF） mode with different configurations of sludge retention time（SRT）, carbon and initial biomass concentrations to enrich polyhydroxyalkanoate（PHA） accumulating mixed microbial cultures（MMCs） from municipal activated sludge.The stability of SBRs was investigated besides the enrichment performance. The microbial community structures of the enriched MMCs were analyzed using terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism（T-RFLP）. The optimum operating conditions for the enrichment process were： SRT of 5 days, carbon concentration of 2.52 g COD/L and initial biomass concentration of3.65 g/L. The best enrichment performance in terms of both operating stability and PHA storage ability of enriched cultures（with the maximum PHA content and PHA storage yield（YPHA/S） of61.26% and 0.68 mg COD/mg COD, respectively） was achieved under this condition. Effects of the SRT, carbon concentration and initial biomass concentration on the PHA accumulating MMCs selection process were discussed respectively. A new model including the segmentation of the enrichment process and the effects of SRT on each phase was proposed.