Effects of increasing organic loading rate on performance and microbial community shift of an up-flow anaerobic sludge blanket reactor treating diluted pharmaceutical wastewater

The performance of an up-flow anaerobic sludge blanket (UASB) reactor was investigated in the treatment of diluted pharmaceutical fermentation wastewater for a continuous operation of 140 days. The dynamics and compositions of the microbial community were monitored using polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-restriction fragment length polymorphism (PCR-RFLP) analysis. Increase of the organic loading rate (OLR) from 2.7 kg COD/m3 d to 7.2 COD/m3 d led to an increase in the COD removal efficiency from 83% to 91%. The dominant bacteria shifted from Proteobacteria (23.8%), Chloroflexi (14.5%) and Firmicutes (4.0%) to Firmicutes (48.4%), Bacteroidetes (9.5%) and Proteobacteria (5.4%). For archeaon, the dominant groups changed from Thermoplasmata (24.4%), Thermoprotei (18.0%) and Methanobacteria (30.8%) to Thermoplasmata (70.4%) and Methanomicrobia (16.8%). Firmicutes, Bacteroidetes, Thermoplasmata and Methanobacteria could outcompete other species and dominated in the reactor under higher OLR. The results indicated that, to some extent, microbial community shift could reflect the performance of the reactor and a significant community shift corresponded to a considerable process event.