Impact of food to microorganism ratio and alcohol ethoxylate dosage on methane production in treatment of low-strength wastewater by a submerged anaerobic membrane bioreactor

Yulun Nie, Xike Tian, Zhaoxin Zhou, Yu-You Li

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Front. Environ. Sci. Eng. ›› 2017, Vol. 11 ›› Issue (6) : 6. DOI: 10.1007/s11783-017-0947-1
RESEARCH ARTICLE

Impact of food to microorganism ratio and alcohol ethoxylate dosage on methane production in treatment of low-strength wastewater by a submerged anaerobic membrane bioreactor

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Highlights

Efficient methane recovery was obtained when the F/M ratio was below 0.357.

AE was efficiently degraded and converted into CH 4 by anaerobic microbes.

Microbe could cope with the stress of AE by producing more EPS and SMP.

F/M ratio of 1.054 decrease the methane production potential significantly.

The methane production activity of sludge was inhibited at a higher AE dosage.

Abstract

The effects of food to microorganism (F/M) ratio and alcohol ethoxylate (AE) dosage on the methane production potential were investigated in treatment of low-strength wastewater by a submerged anaerobic membrane bioreactor (SAnMBR). The fate of AE and its acute and/or chronic impact on the anaerobic microbes were also analyzed. The results indicated that AE had an inhibitory effect to methane production potential (lag-time depends on the AE dosage) and the negative effect attenuated subsequently and methane production could recover at F/M ratio of 0.088–0.357. VFA measurement proved that AE was degraded into small molecular organic acids and then converted into methane at lower F/M ratio (F/M<0.158). After long-term acclimation, anaerobic microbe could cope with the stress of AE by producing more EPS (extracellular polymeric substances) and SMP (soluble microbial products) due to its self-protection behavior and then enhance its tolerance ability. However, the methane production potential was considerably decreased when AE was present in wastewater at a higher F/M ratio of 1.054. Higher AE amount and F/M ratio may destroy the cell structure of microbe, which lead to the decrease of methane production activity of sludge and methane production potential.

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Keywords

Anaerobic membrane bioreactor AnMBR / F/M ratio / Surfactant / Wastewater / Methane production / Influence

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Yulun Nie, Xike Tian, Zhaoxin Zhou, Yu-You Li. Impact of food to microorganism ratio and alcohol ethoxylate dosage on methane production in treatment of low-strength wastewater by a submerged anaerobic membrane bioreactor. Front. Environ. Sci. Eng., 2017, 11(6): 6 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11783-017-0947-1

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by KAKENHI Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (No. 26289179). The authors gratefully acknowledge support by JSPS (Japan Society for the Promotion of Science) KAKENHI Grant-in-Aid for JSPS Fellows (26.04734) and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, China University of Geosciences (Wuhan).

Electronic Supplementary Material

Supplementary material is available in the online version of this article at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11783-017-0947-1 and is accessible for authorized users.

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