Bacterial community structures in MBRs treating municipal wastewater: Relationship between community stability and reactor performance

Bacterial community structures in pilot-scale conventional membrane bioreactors (CMBRs) and hybrid MBRs (HMBRs) which were combined with pre-coagulation/sedimentation were analyzed by polymerase chain reaction-denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (PCR-DGGE) and fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) techniques. The results were compared with the community structure in a full-scale activated sludge (AS) process treating the same municipal wastewater. The Dice index (Cs) of similarity analysis of DGGE banding patterns demonstrated that the microbial community in AS was more similar to those in CMBR1 and CMBR2 than HMBR1 and HMBR2. This suggested that influent wastewater composition had a larger impact on bacterial community structures. Long-term community structure changes in the HMBRs and CMBRs were monitored and analyzed over 240 days by Non-metric multidimensional scaling (NMDS) analysis of DGGE banding patterns. The NMDS analysis revealed that both HMBRs and CMBRs had marked changes in community structures during the first about 100 days. Thereafter the perpetual fluctuations of bacterial community structures were observed in both HMBRs and CMBRs, even though the stable MBR performances (the performance was measured as membrane permeability and removal of dissolved organic carbon, DOC) were achieved. These results suggest that not only the stability, but also the adequate dynamics (“flexibility”) of the bacterial community structure are important for the stable performance of the MBRs treating complex municipal wastewater.