Characterization of a microbial consortium capable of heterotrophic nitrifying under wide C/N range and its potential application in phenolic and coking wastewater

Nitrogen pollution has been a serious problem in environmental water particularly in industrial wastewater. A microbial consortium named FG-06 was found to exhibit efficient heterotrophic nitrification and aerobic denitrification ability, with the maximum NH4+-N, NO2--N and NO3--N removal rate of 7.33, 6.53 and 4.53 mg/L/h, respectively. High-throughput sequencing analysis showed that it was mainly made up of Acinetobacter spp. (54.37%) and Pseudomonas spp. (26.52%). The consortium could grow under a wide range of C/N ratio and the NH4+-N removal efficiencies at C/N ratio 4 and 32 were 90.40% and 93.84% separately. Furthermore, simultaneous biodegradation of NH4+-N and COD were achieved by inoculation with enriched consortium in synthetic phenolic wastewater and real coking wastewater samples. Results demonstrated that the consortium had high potential for further practical applications. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.