Competition for electrons between reductive dechlorination and denitrification

doi:10.1007/s11783-017-0959-x

Front. Environ. Sci. Eng.

2017, Vol. 11

Issue (6) : 14 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11783-017-0959-x

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Competition for electrons between reductive dechlorination and denitrification

Lifeng Cao¹, Weihua Sun¹(

), Yuting Zhang¹, Shimin Feng¹, Jinyun Dong¹, Yongming Zhang¹, Bruce E. Rittmann²

¹. Department of Environmental Science and Engineering, College of Life and Environmental Science, Shanghai Normal University, Shanghai 200234, China
². Biodesign Swette Center for Environmental Biotechnology, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287-5701, USA

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Abstract

Simultaneous reductive dechlorination and denitrification occurred simultaneously in VBBR.

The mechanism of the mutual inhibition between TCP and nitrate or nitrite was identified clearly.

Declorination was more sensitive to competitive inhibition than either denitrification.

Nitrite had a smaller inhibitory impact on TCP reduction than nitrate.

Both reactions proceed more rapidly if the oxidized nitrogen is nitrite instead of nitrate.

All reactions could be accelerated by exogenous electron donors, and especially for TCP reduction.

It is common that 2,4,6-trichlorophenol (TCP) coexists with nitrate or nitrite in industrial wastewaters. In this work, simultaneous reductive dechlorination of TCP and denitrification of nitrate or nitrite competed for electron donor, which led to their mutual inhibition. All inhibitions could be relieved to a certain degree by augmenting an organic electron donor, but the impact of the added electron donor was strongest for TCP. For simultaneous reduction of TCP together with nitrate, TCP’s removal rate value increased 75% and 150%, respectively, when added glucose was increased from 0.4 mmol·L^–1 to 0.5 mmol·L^–1 and to 0.76 mmol·L^–1. For comparison, the removal rate for nitrate increased by only 25% and 114% for the same added glucose. The relationship between their initial biodegradation rates versus their initial concentrations could be represented well with the Monod model, which quantified their half-maximum-rate concentration (K_S value), and K_S values for TCP, nitrate, and nitrite were larger with simultaneous reduction than independent reduction. The increases in K_S are further evidence that competition for the electron donor led to mutual inhibition. For bioremediation of wastewater containing TCP and oxidized nitrogen, both reduction reactions should proceed more rapidly if the oxidized nitrogen is nitrite instead of nitrate and if readily biodegradable electron acceptor is augmented.

Keywords Competition for electrons Denitrification Reductive dechlorination Bioremediation Nitrate 2 4 6-trichlorophenol

Corresponding Author(s): Weihua Sun,Yongming Zhang

Issue Date: 16 June 2017

Cite this article:

Lifeng Cao,Weihua Sun,Yuting Zhang, et al. Competition for electrons between reductive dechlorination and denitrification[J]. Front. Environ. Sci. Eng., 2017, 11(6): 14.

URL:

https://academic.hep.com.cn/fese/EN/10.1007/s11783-017-0959-x
https://academic.hep.com.cn/fese/EN/Y2017/V11/I6/14

Fig.1 TCP biodegradation pathway based on McFall et al. [24], Louie et al. [25], Annachhatre and Gheewala [26], Wang et al. [27], Bock et al. [28], and Snyder et al. [29]. The initial three steps are reductive dechlorinations that require 2H. Phenol undergoes sequential mono-oxygenation to produce catechol and maleic acid semi-aldehyde. Subsequent hydroxylations and dehydrogenations of muconic acid yield 22H

Fig.2 Diagrammatic sketch of the vertical baffled bioreactor (VBBR)

Fig.3 Independent biological reductions of TCP, nitrate, and nitrite with 0.5 mmol?L^–1 glucose added. In this figure, (E) symbols mean experimental values and are the averages of two parallel runs; (C) lines mean calculated values based on the indicated best-fit k values (units of mmol?L^–1h^–1) of zero-order kinetics for TCP, and k values (units of h^–1) of first-order kinetics for nitrate and nitrite. Error bars indicate the range of concentrations for duplicate experiments

Fig.4 Generation of TCP intermediates in parallel to TCP loss. Sum is the addition of the mmol?L^–1 concentrations of TCP, DCP, MCP, and phenol. Error bars indicate the range of concentrations for duplicate experiments

Fig.5 Simultaneous reductions of nitrate and TCP with different concentration of glucose added; the residual soluble COD was less than 10 mg?L^–1. In this figure, (E) symbols mean experimental values and are the averages of two parallel runs; (C) lines mean calculated values based on the indicated best-fit k values (units of mmol?L^–1?h^–1) of zero-order kinetics for TCP, and k values (units of h^–1) of first-order kinetics for nitrate. Error bars indicate the range of concentrations for duplicate experiments.

Fig.6 Simultaneous reductions of nitrite and TCP with different concentration of glucose added; the residual soluble COD was less than 10 mg?L^–1. In this figure, (E) symbols mean experimental values and are the averages of two parallel runs; (C) lines mean calculated values based on the indicated best-fit k values (units of mmol?L^–1?h^–1) of zero-order kinetics for TCP, and k values (units of h^–1) of first-order kinetics for nitrite. Error bars indicate the range of concentrations for duplicate experiments

Fig.7 Comparison of removal-rate constants for nitrate, nitrite, and TCP for independent and simultaneous biodegradation experiments. Nitrate and nitrite have first-order kinetics with units of h^–1, and TCP has zero-order kinetics with unit of mmol?L^–1?h^–1. The top panel shows the impacts of nitrate and nitrite on the k value for TCP; not the different scale for TCP alone. The bottom panel shows the impacts of TCP on k values of nitrate and nitrite

Fig.8 Relationship between initial TCP, nitrate, and nitrite concentrations with their initial removal rates (average values for the interval of 10 to 20 min) corresponding to independent or simultaneous biodegradation. In this figure, (E) symbols mean experimental values and are the averages of two parallel runs; (C) lines mean calculated values based on Monod model. Error bars indicate the range of concentrations for duplicate experiments

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