Simultaneous enrichment of denitrifying anaerobic methane-oxidizing microorganisms and anammox bacteria in a hollow-fiber membrane biofilm reactor.

In this study, the coculture system of denitrifying anaerobic methane oxidation (DAMO) microbes and anaerobic ammonium oxidation (anammox) bacteria was successfully enriched in a hollow-fiber membrane biofilm reactor (HfMBR) using freshwater sediment as the inoculum. The maximal removal rates of nitrate and ammonium were 78 mg N/L/day (131 mg N/m/day) and 26 mg N/L/day (43 mg N/m/day), respectively. Due to the high rate of methane mass transfer in HfMBR, the activity of DAMO archaea continued to increase during the enrichment period, indicating that HfMBR could be a powerful tool to enrich DAMO microorganisms. Effects of partial methane pressure, temperature, and pH on the cocultures were obvious. However, the microbial activity in HfMBR could be recovered quickly after the shock change of environmental factors. Furthermore, the result also found that DAMO bacteria likely had a stronger competitive advantage than anammox bacteria under the operating conditions in this study. High-throughput sequencing 16S rRNA genes illustrated that the dominant microbes were NC10, Euryarchaeota, Proteobacteria, Planctomycetes, and Chlorobi with relative abundance of 38.8, 26.2, 13.78, 6.2, and 3.6 %, respectively.