The impact of different voltage application modes on biodegradation of chloramphenicol and shift of microbial community structure

Highlights

● Presented coupled system enhanced biodegradation of antibiotic chloramphenicol.

● HRT and electrical stimulation modes were key influencing factors.

● Electrical stimulation had little effect on the chloramphenicol metabolic pathway.

● Microbial community structure varied with the voltage application mode.

Abstract

Exoelectrogenic biofilms have received considerable attention for their ability to enhance electron transfer between contaminants and electrodes in bioelectrochemical systems. In this study, we constructed anaerobic-aerobic-coupled upflow bioelectrochemical reactors (AO-UBERs) with different voltage application modes, voltages and hydraulic retention times (HRTs). In addition, we evaluated their capacity to remove chloramphenicol (CAP). AO-UBER can effectively mineralize CAP and its metabolites through electrical stimulation when an appropriate voltage is applied. The CAP removal efficiencies were ~81.1%±6.1% (intermittent voltage application mode) and 75.2%±4.6% (continuous voltage application mode) under 0.5 V supply voltage, which were ~21.5% and 15.6% greater than those in the control system without voltage applied, respectively. The removal efficiency is mainly attributed to the anaerobic chamber. High-throughput sequencing combined with catabolic pathway analysis indicated that electrical stimulation selectively enriched Megasphaera, Janthinobacterium, Pseudomonas, Emticicia, Zoogloea, Cloacibacterium and Cetobacterium, which are capable of denitrification, dechlorination and benzene ring cleavage, respectively. This study shows that under the intermittent voltage application mode, AO-UBERs are highly promising for treating antibiotic-contaminated wastewater.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

Electrical stimulation / Biodegradation / Microbial community / Chloramphenicol

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Author contributions

Yifan Liu: Conducting investigations, formulating methodology, conducting experiments, data collation and analysis, and writing the original draft. Qiongfang Zhang: Conducting experiments, data collation, analysis, writing, review, and editing. Nuerla Ailijiang: Conducting investigations, supervision, conceptualization, writing, review, editing, and formal analysis. Ainiwaer Sidike: Assisted with the experiments. Anwar Mamat: Conducted investigation, assistancd with sampling, and provided experimental guidance. Guangxiao Zhang: Assisted with the experiments. Miao Pu: Assisted with the experiments. Wenhu Cheng: Assisted with sample collection. Zhengtao Pang assisted with the experiments.

Conflicts of interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledged financial support provided by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 51968067), the Natural Science Foundation of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region of China (No. 2018D01C044), the State Key Laboratory of Pollution Control and Resource Reuse Foundation (China) (No. PCRRF19013) and the Student Research Training Project of XJU (China) (No. 201910755063).

Electronic Supplementary Material

Supplementary material is available in the online version of this article at https://doi.org/10.1007/s11783-022-1576-x and is accessible for authorized users.

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