Performance and Microbial Characteristics of Bioaugmentation Systems for Polyacrylamide Degradation

Efficient and reliable removal of polyacrylamide (PAM), which are present in oil extraction waste water, is critically important to prevent toxic discharges to receiving waters. In the present study, two PAM degrading bacterial strains, namely HWBI and HWBIII, were isolated from the activated sludge and soil in an oil field. Two sequencing batch reactors (SBRs) were bioaugmented with either HWBI or HWBIII and the performance of each bacteria for enhancing PAM removal was compared. The effects of bioaugmentation on the performance of the SBRs with different exogenous strains after a single inoculation were investigated under long term operation. Results showed that for the SBR augmented with HWBI, 70% of PAM was removed at the end of the first operation cycle, and the removal remained at approximately 70% in the following eight cycles after a single inoculation. For the SBR augmented with HWBIII, only 45% of the PAM was removed in the first cycle after the inoculation, and PAM removal decreased to 30% after eight cycles. Terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism (T-RFLP), a molecular screening technique, was applied to track the supplemented bacterial strains and to evaluate the effects of bioaugmentation on the microbial communities and to investigate the optimal bioaugmentation strategy.