Impact of food to microorganism (F/M) ratio and colloidal chemical oxygen demand on nitrification performance of a full-scale membrane bioreactor treating thin film transistor liquid crystal display wastewater

• Nitrification can be feasible for full-scale MBR treating high nitrogen-containing wastewater.
• F/M ratio is important to stable nitrification for TFT-LCD wastewater treatment.
• Colloidal COD at a concentration higher than 150 mg/L inhibits nitrification.
• Occurrence of Nm. oligotropha indicates good nitrification in MBR treating TFT-LCD wastewater.

This study investigated impact of food to microorganism (F/M) ratio and colloidal chemical oxygen demand (COD) on nitrification performance in one full-scale membrane bioreactor (MBR) treating monoethanolamine (MEA)/dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO)-containing thin film transistor liquid crystal display (TFT-LCD) wastewater. Poor nitrification was observed under high organic loading and high colloidal COD conditions, suggesting that high F/M ratio and colloidal COD situations should be avoided to minimize their negative impacts on nitrification. According to the nonmetric multidimensional scaling (NMS) statistical analyses on terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism (T-RFLP) results of ammonia monooxygenase (amoA) gene, the occurrence of Nitrosomonas oligotropha-like ammonia oxidizing bacteria (AOB) was positively related to successful nitrification in the MBR systems, while Nitrosomonas europaea-like AOB was positively linked to nitrification rate, which can be attributed to the high influent total nitrogen condition. Furthermore, Nitrobacter- and Nitrospira-like nitrite oxidizing bacteria (NOB) were both abundant in the MBR systems, but the continuously low nitrite environment is likely to promote the growth of Nitrospira-like NOB.