TY - JOUR
T1 - Efficacy of heated tourmaline in reducing biomass clogging within woodchip bioreactors
AU - Ma, Chengjin
AU - Christianson, Laura
AU - Huang, Xiangfeng
AU - Christianson, Reid David
AU - Cooke, Richard A.
AU - Bhattarai, Rabin
AU - Li, Shiyang
N1 - This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 51809195 ), the Postdoctoral Science Foundation of China (No. 2018M642083 ), the Major Science and Technology Program for Water Pollution Control and Treatment of China (Nos. 2017ZX07204004 and 2017ZX07204002 ), and the Illinois Nutrient Research and Education Council ( NREC 2017-4-360498-302 ).
PY - 2021/2/10
Y1 - 2021/2/10
N2 - Woodchip bioreactors can effectively remove waterborne nitrates from subsurface agricultural drainage and prevent the eutrophication of receiving water, but rapid biofilm growth can severely reduce water flux and denitrification efficiency of this practice within a few years. Tourmaline minerals with thermal excitation could generate reactive oxygen species which would inhibit bacterial growth. In this study, laboratory scale woodchip bioreactors were set up to test the anti-clogging and denitrification efficiency of heated woodchips with tourmaline, heated woodchips without tourmaline, and unheated woodchips. The results showed that the heated tourmaline treatment could reduce the clogging and optimize the nitrate removal rate (47.6 g N/m3/day) under all three hydrologic retention times tested (1, 4, and 8 h). Dissolved oxygen and pH values fluctuated with the removal rate and temperature change, while temperature was identified as the key factor impacting the tourmaline treatment. The heated tourmaline treatment had the lowest biofilm growth (lowest DNA concentration), while the 16S rRNA and a higher abundance of nirS-, nirK-, and nosZ-encoding denitrifying bacteria (based on qPCR) confirmed the higher denitrification efficiency of the heated tourmaline treatment.
AB - Woodchip bioreactors can effectively remove waterborne nitrates from subsurface agricultural drainage and prevent the eutrophication of receiving water, but rapid biofilm growth can severely reduce water flux and denitrification efficiency of this practice within a few years. Tourmaline minerals with thermal excitation could generate reactive oxygen species which would inhibit bacterial growth. In this study, laboratory scale woodchip bioreactors were set up to test the anti-clogging and denitrification efficiency of heated woodchips with tourmaline, heated woodchips without tourmaline, and unheated woodchips. The results showed that the heated tourmaline treatment could reduce the clogging and optimize the nitrate removal rate (47.6 g N/m3/day) under all three hydrologic retention times tested (1, 4, and 8 h). Dissolved oxygen and pH values fluctuated with the removal rate and temperature change, while temperature was identified as the key factor impacting the tourmaline treatment. The heated tourmaline treatment had the lowest biofilm growth (lowest DNA concentration), while the 16S rRNA and a higher abundance of nirS-, nirK-, and nosZ-encoding denitrifying bacteria (based on qPCR) confirmed the higher denitrification efficiency of the heated tourmaline treatment.
KW - Denitrification bioreactor
KW - Infrared bioaugmentation
KW - Non-point pollution
KW - Subsurface drainage
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U2 - 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.142401
DO - 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.142401
M3 - Article
C2 - 33017758
SN - 0048-9697
VL - 755
JO - Science of the Total Environment
JF - Science of the Total Environment
M1 - 142401
ER -