The ecological niche of aerobic denitrifiers in activated sludge is little studied, but this determines the performance of these bacteria in reactors. Acinetobacter sp. YS2 isolated from a treatment process for petrochemical wastewater and showed excellent nitrogen removal performance. In the nitrification and denitrification process, the removal efficiencies of NH4+-N and NO3--N were 87.81% and 88.20% at 24 h, respectively, and nitrogen balance analysis indicated that the proportions of nitrogen removal by gaseous nitrogen were 37.58% and 46.45%, respectively. During simultaneous nitrification and denitrification (SND) treatment of synthetic petrochemical wastewater in a sequencing batch reactor (SBR), aerobic denitrifiers became the dominant species and the proportion reached 87.44% in the microbial community. The removal efficiencies of NH4+-N and TN were 99.46% and 80.36% over 5 days, respectively. This research has shown that aerobic denitrifiers can become the dominant species in the applications of SND treatment for petrochemical wastewater.
Keywords: Acinetobacter sp.; Aerobic denitrification; Ecological niche; Microbial community; Petrochemical wastewater.
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