Reconsideration on the effect of nitrogen on mixed culture polyhydroxyalkanoate production toward high organic loading enrichment history

Highlights

Effect of nitrogen on mixed culture PHA production was reconsidered.

Enrichment history of PHA accumulating culture was discussed.

Higher PHA content and biomass growth were achieved in presence of nitrogen.

Enrichment strategy toward higher PHA accumulation was investigated.

Microbial community succession in PHA accumulation phase was investigated.

Abstract

In most of the operating strategies for mixed microbial cultures polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA) production, moderate organic loads and low nitrogen concentrations are used, however, the real waste streams contain variable concentrations of carbon and nitrogen. To evaluate the effect of enrichment history on PHA producer and production the various carbon and nitrogen levels were utilized during the accumulation phase. Different operating strategies were applied in three sequencing batch reactors (SBRs) subjected to aerobic dynamic feeding. The maximum PHA production of the enriched cultures under nutrient excess, limitation and starvation (Cmol/Nmol ratio of 8, 40 and ∞, respectively) was evaluated in batch assays. A higher PHA content and biomass growth were achieved in the nutrients presence in comparison to the nutrient starvation condition. The cultures from the SBR treated under short sludge retention time, high organic loading rate, short cycle length (SBR#3) and nutrient excess reached the maximum PHA content (54.9%) and biomass increase (38.9%). Under nutrient limitation, the negative biomass growth was observed under nutrient starvation because of the sampling loss. The succession of microbial communities in SBRs and batch assays was analyzed using terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism. The SBR#3 had the best overall PHA production performance considering its high PHA content and productivity in all nutrient content, it indicates that nitrogen has a substantial impact on PHA yield especially when high organic loading rate enrichment history is involved.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

Polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA) / Organic loading rate / Nitrogen content / Biomass growth / Enrichment history

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Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the financial support of the National Key R&D Program of China (Grant No. 2016YFC0401102-3), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 51578183) and the Nanqi Ren Studio, Academy of Environment & Ecology, Harbin Institute of Technology (No. HSCJ201703). We also acknowledge the language help from Dr. Michal Sposob at University of South-east Norway.

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