Cyclic Conversions in the Nitrogen Cycle

Role of Microbial Communities and Their Functional Gene in Anammox Process for Biodegradation of Bisphenol A and S in Pharmaceutical Wastewater

Substantial amounts of nitrogenous (N) compounds, as well as bisphenol A (BPA) and bisphenol S (BPS), contribute to the impurities of pharmaceutical contamination (PC) in wastewater, which have detrimental effects on the environment, humans, and aquaculture. The anammox processes is primarily used to treat wastewater contamination, in which certain microbial communities play a crucial role. In this regard, the present study focuses on microbial communities and the functional genes involved in the anammox process. Further, the current study highlights the secondary (biological) and tertiary (advanced) methods; these techniques are more effective solutions for PC treatment. Anammox bacteria are the primary drivers of the wastewater's ammonium and nitrite removal process. However, overall, 25 anammox species have been recognized between five important genera, including Anammoxoglobus, Anammoximicrobium, Brocadia, Kuenenia, and Jettenia, which are mainly found in activated sludge and marine environments. The group of bacteria called anammox has genes that encode enzymes such as hydrazine synthase (HZS), hydrazine dehydrogenase (HDH), nitrite oxidoreductase reductase (NIR), hydroxylamine oxidoreductase (HAO), and ammonium monooxygenase (AMO). The anammox process is responsible for developing about 30% to 70% N gases worldwide, making it a critical component of the nitrogen cycle as well. Therefore, this review paper also investigates the pathways of hydrazine, an intermediate in the anammox process, and discusses the potential way to significantly decrease the N-compound contamination from wastewater systems and the environmental effects of determined organic contaminants of BPA and BPS.

Comammox rather than AOB dominated the efficient autotrophic nitrification-denitrification process in an extremely oxygen-limited environment

The discovery of complete ammonia oxidizer (comammox) has challenged the traditional understanding of the two-step nitrification process. However, their functions in the oxygen-limited autotrophic nitrification-denitrification (OLAND) process remain unclear. In this study, OLAND was achieved using comammox-dominated nitrifying bacteria in an extremely oxygen-limited environment with a dissolved oxygen concentrations of 0.05 mg/L. The ammonia removal efficiency exceeded 97 %, and the total nitrogen removal efficiency reached 71 % when sodium bicarbonate was used as the carbon source. The pseudo-first- and second-order models were found to best fit the ammonia removal processes under low and high loads, respectively, suggesting distinct ammonia removal pathways. Full-length 16S rRNA gene sequencing and metagenomic results revealed that comammox-dominated under different oxygen levels, in conjunction with anammox and heterotrophic denitrifiers. The abundance of enzymes involved in energy metabolism indicates the coexistence of anammox and autotrophic nitrification-heterotrophic denitrification pathways. The binning results showed that comammox bacteria engaged in horizontal gene transfer with nitrifiers, anammox bacteria, and denitrifiers to adapt to an obligate environments. Therefore, this study demonstrated that comammox, anammox, and heterotrophic denitrifiers play important roles in the OLAND process and provide a reference for further reducing aeration energy in the autotrophic nitrogen removal process.

Role of comammox bacteria in granular bioreactor for nitrogen removal via partial nitritation/anammox

In this study, two bioprocess models were first constructed with the newly-discovered comammox process described as one-step and two-step nitrification and evaluated against relevant experimental data. The validated models were then applied to reveal the potential effect of comammox bacteria on the granular bioreactor particularly suitable for undertaking partial nitritation/anammox (PN/A) under different operating conditions of bulk dissolved oxygen (DO) and influent NH4+. The results showed although comammox bacteria-based PN/A could achieve > 80.0 % total nitrogen (TN) removal over a relatively wider range of bulk DO and influent NH4+ (i.e., 0.25-0.40 g-O2/m3 and 470-870 g-N/m3, respectively) without significant nitrous oxide (N2O) production (< 0.1 %), the bulk DO should be finely controlled based on the influent NH4+ to avoid the undesired full nitrification by comammox bacteria. Comparatively, conventional ammonium-oxidizing bacteria (AOB)-based PN/A not only required higher bulk DO to achieve > 80.0 % TN removal but also suffered from 1.7 %∼2.8 % N2O production.

Competitive and substrate limited environments drive metabolic heterogeneity for comammox Nitrospira

Nitrospira has been revealed as a high versatile genus. Although previously considered only responsible for the conversion of nitrite to nitrate, now we know that Nitrospira can perform complete ammonia oxidation to nitrate too (comammox). Comammox activity was firstly reported as dominant in extremely limited oxygen environments, where anaerobic ammonia oxidation was also occurring (anammox). To explain the comammox selection, we developed an Individual-based Model able to describe Nitrospira and anammox growth in suspended flocs assembled in a dynamic nitrogen and oxygen-limiting environment. All known and hypothesized nitrogen transformations of Nitrospira were considered: ammonia and nitrite oxidation, comammox, nitrate-reducing ammonia oxidation, and anaerobic nitrite-reducing ammonia oxidation. Through bioenergetics analysis, the growth yield associated to each activity was estimated. The other kinetic parameters necessary to describe growth were calibrated according to the reported literature values. Our modeling results suggest that even extremely low oxygen concentrations (~1.0 µM) allow for a proportional growth of anammox versus Nitrospira similar to the one experimentally observed. The strong oxygen limitation was followed by a limitation of ammonia and nitrite, because anammox, without strong competitors, were able to grow faster than Nitrospira depleting the environment in nitrogen. These substrate limitations created an extremely competitive environment that proved to be decisive in the community assembly of Nitrospira and anammox. Additionally, a diversity of metabolic activities for Nitrospira was observed in all tested conditions, which in turn, explained the transient nitrite accumulation observed in aerobic environments with higher ammonia availability.

Enhanced leachate phytodetoxification test combined with plants and rhizobacteria bioaugmentation

Plant combination and rhizobacterial bioaugmentation are the modification of constructed wetlands (CWs) to promote the detoxification of leachate. In this study, characterization of leachate was carried out to ensure the maximum concentration of leachate that did not affect the plant's growth. Herein, the identification of leachate-resistant rhizobacteria is used to determine the type of bacteria that is resistant and has the potential for leachate processing in the next step. The phytodetoxification test is carried out by comparing the addition of rhizobacteria and without the addition of rhizobacteria to detox leachate parameter Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD), Biological Oxygen Demand (BOD), Total Suspended Solid (TSS), Total Nitrogen (TN), Cadmium (Cd), and Mercury (Hg). Results showed that used plants could still live in the largest leachate concentration of 100%. The rhizobacteria that were identified and bioaugmented in the reactor were Bacillus cereus, Nitrosomonas communis, and Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Phytodetoxification test by a single plant showed the efficiency ranged between 40% and 70%. The addition of rhizobacterial bioaugmentation and plant combination can improve the percentage of COD 80.47%, BOD 84.05%, TSS 80.05%, TN 75.58%, Cd 99.96%, and Hg 90%. These modifications are very influential for leachate detoxification through plant uptake and rhizodegradation processes.

Land-Use Impact on Water Quality of the Opak Sub-Watershed, Yogyakarta, Indonesia

The integrated monitoring system of water quality is eminently reliant on water quality trend data. This study aims to obtain water quality patterns related to land-use change over a periodic observation in the Opak sub-watershed, Indonesia, both from a seasonal and spatial point of view. Landsat image data from 2013 to 2020 and water quality data comprising 25 parameters were compiled and analyzed. This study observed that land use remarkably correlated to water quality, especially the building area representing the dense population and various anthropogenic activities, to pollute the water sources. Three types of pollutant sources were identified using principal component analysis (PCA), including domestic, industrial, and agricultural activities, which all influenced the variance in river water quality. The use of spatiotemporal-based and multivariate analysis was to interpret water quality trend data, which can help the stakeholders to monitor pollution and take control in the Opak sub-watershed. The results investigated 17 out of 25 water quality parameters, which showed an increasing trend from upstream to downstream during the observation time. The concentration of biological oxygen demand over five days (BOD5), chemical oxygen demand (COD), nitrite, sulfide, phenol, phosphate, oil and grease, lead, Escherichia coli (E. coli), and total coli, surpassed the water quality standard through spatial analysis.