Contribution of prokaryotes and eukaryotes to CO2 emissions in the wastewater treatment process

Katarzyna Jaromin-Gleń; Roman Babko; Tatiana Kuzmina; Yaroslav Danko; Grzegorz Łagód; Cezary Polakowski; Joanna Szulżyk-Cieplak; Andrzej Bieganowski

doi:10.7717/peerj.9325

Contribution of prokaryotes and eukaryotes to CO₂ emissions in the wastewater treatment process

PeerJ. 2020 Jun 17:8:e9325. doi: 10.7717/peerj.9325. eCollection 2020.

Authors

Katarzyna Jaromin-Gleń¹, Roman Babko², Tatiana Kuzmina³, Yaroslav Danko⁴, Grzegorz Łagód⁵, Cezary Polakowski¹, Joanna Szulżyk-Cieplak⁶, Andrzej Bieganowski¹

Affiliations

¹ Institute of Agrophysics, Polish Academy of Sciences, Lublin, Poland.
² Schmalhausen Institute of Zoology, National Academy of Sciences, Kiev, Ukraine.
³ Sumy State University, Sumy, Ukraine.
⁴ Sumy Makarenko State Pedagogical University, Sumy, Ukraine.
⁵ Environmental Engineering Faculty, Lublin University of Technology, Lublin, Poland.
⁶ Fundamentals of Technology Faculty, Lublin University of Technology, Lublin, Poland.

Abstract

Reduction of the greenhouse effect is primarily associated with the reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Carbon dioxide (CO₂) is one of the gases that increases the greenhouse effect - it is responsible for about half of the greenhouse effect. Significant sources of CO₂ are wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) and waste management, with about 3% contribution to global emissions. CO₂ is produced mainly in the aerobic stage of wastewater purification and is a consequence of activated sludge activity. Although the roles of activated sludge components in the purification process have been studied quite well, their quantitative contribution to CO₂ emissions is still unknown. The emission of CO₂ caused by prokaryotes and eukaryotes over the course of a year (taking into account subsequent seasons) in model sequencing batch reactors (SBR) is presented in this study. In this work, for the first time, we aimed to quantify this contribution of eukaryotic organisms to total CO₂ emissions during the WWTP process. It is of the order of several or more ppm. The contribution of CO₂ produced by different components of activated sludge in WWTPs can improve estimation of the emissions of GHGs in this area of human activity.

Keywords: CO2 emission; Eukaryotes; Prokaryotes; Sequencing batch reactor.

Grants and funding

Work was financially supported by Ministry of Science and Higher Education in Poland, within the statutory research of particular scientific units under subvention for science program and by the National Science Centre (Poland) No. 2015/17/N/ST10/02194. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.