title: Using co-metabolism to accelerate synthetic starch wastewater degradation and nutrient recovery in photosynthetic bacterial wastewater treatment technology.
abstract: Starch wastewater is a type of nutrient-rich wastewater that contains numerous macromolecular polysaccharides. Using photosynthetic bacteria (PSB) to treat starch wastewater can reduce pollutants and enhance useful biomass production. However, PSB cannot directly degrade macromolecular polysaccharides, which weakens the starch degradation effect. Therefore, co-metabolism with primary substances was employed in PSB wastewater treatment to promote starch degradation. The results indicated that co-metabolism is a highly effective method in synthetic starch degradation by PSB. When malic acid was used as the optimal primary substrate, the chemical oxygen demand, total sugar, macromolecules removal and biomass yield were considerably higher than when primary substances were not used, respectively. Malic acid was the primary substrate that played a highly important role in starch degradation. It promoted the alpha-amylase activity to 46.8 U and the PSB activity, which induced the degradation of macromolecules. The products in the wastewater were ethanol, acetic acid and propionic acid. Ethanol was the primary product throughout the degradation process. The introduction of co-metabolism with malic acid to treat wastewater can accelerate macromolecules degradation and bioresource production and weaken the acidification effect. This method provides another pathway for bioresource recovery from wastewater. This approach is a sustainable and environmentally friendly wastewater treatment technology.
authors.affiliation: a College of Water Resource and Civil Engineering , China Agriculture University , Beijing 100083 , People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Haifeng
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Lu
authors.affiliation: b School of Environment and Natural Resources , Renmin University of China , Beijing 100872 , People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Guangming
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: c State Key Laboratory of Urban Water Resource Environment , Harbin Institute of Technology , Harbin 150090 , People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Yufeng
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Lu
authors.affiliation: d Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering , University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign , Urbana 61801 , USA.
authors.forename: Yuanhui
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: a College of Water Resource and Civil Engineering , China Agriculture University , Beijing 100083 , People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Baoming
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: a College of Water Resource and Civil Engineering , China Agriculture University , Beijing 100083 , People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Wei
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Cao
mesh_terms: D000431:Ethanol / Q000378:metabolism; D008293:Malates / Q000378:metabolism; D010788:Photosynthesis; D012242:Rhodobacter sphaeroides / Q000378:metabolism*; D013213:Starch / Q000737:chemistry*; D062065:Wastewater / Q000737:chemistry*; D018508:Water Purification / Q000379:methods*; D000516:alpha-Amylases / Q000378:metabolism
chemical_list: D000431:Ethanol; D008293:Malates; D013213:Starch; D062065:Wastewater; D000516:alpha-Amylases; C030298:malic acid
keywords: Photosynthetic bacteria; alpha-amylase activity; co-metabolism; primary substances; starch wastewater