Abstract
The vertical flow constructed wetlands (VFCW) for the treatment of domestic wastewater has become a conventional and cost effective treatment system with one of the major disadvantage of elevated nitrate concentrations. The present study makes an effort in providing a new design of anaerobic denitrification unit termed as anaerobic chamber (AC) which was introduced after two-stage VFCW to remove nitrates from the treated wastewater (WW). The AC provided all the essential conditions of effective denitrification such as anaerobic environment with enough carbon and nitrogen source. To understand the pollutant removal mechanism in AC, microbial diversity and functional annotation was studied by metagenomic analysis of sequences obtained from biofilm formed in AC. The efficiency of AC was measured with respect to physicochemical wastewater quality parameters. The removal efficiencies were 88, 65, 43 and 27% for total nitrogen, nitrate (NO3), ammoniacal-nitrogen (NH4) and ortho-phosphate respectively. The microbial flora was much more diverse and unique pertaining to anaerobic microbes in AC compared to WW with total of 954 and 1191 genuses respectively with minimum abundance of 10 hits. The metagenomes exhibited 188% more Archaea in the AC than WW where Crenarchaeota, Euryarchaeota, Korarchaeota, Nanoarchaeota and Thaumarchaeota were major phyla with 60 genuses. The nitrogen metabolism was reported in terms of assimilatory nitrate reductase. As the class, Proteobacteria, Actinobacteria were prominent in WW, whereas Proteobacteria, Chloroflexi in AC were abundant. From functional annotation of sequences, the microbial flora in AC has the potential of removal of pollutants present in the form of carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus.
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Acknowledgements
The authors are thankful to BITS Pilani, K.K. Birla Goa Campus, for providing an opportunity to conduct the experiments and allowed to construct the VFCW and in the sewage treatment plant at the campus.
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All the authors have made substantial contributions to the present paper. Author SM was involved in the conception and design of the treatment units. Author RY was involved in acquisition of data, analysis and interpretation of data. Both the authors have participated in drafting the article and revising it critically for important intellectual content and have given final approval of the version to be submitted.
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Yaragal, R.R., Mutnuri, S. Diversity and functional annotation of microorganisms in anaerobic chamber treating nitrate-rich wastewater. World J Microbiol Biotechnol 39, 311 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11274-023-03750-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11274-023-03750-w