The microbial community structure change of an anaerobic ammonia oxidation reactor in response to decreasing temperatures

In anaerobic ammonium oxidation (anammox) systems, temperature may regulate the activity of functional bacteria (e.g., anammox bacteria) and the composition of the microbial population, ultimately determining the performance of the anammox reactor. Knowledge of the dynamic changes in nitrogen removal rates and the microbial anammox community at low and/or ambient temperature is still limited. This study explored the response of an anammox sequencing batch reactor (SBR) to a gradient of decreasing temperature (33, 25, 20, 15, 10 °C), followed by recovery to 22 °C, over 360 days. Particularly, the specific anammox activity (SAA) and microbial community were assessed. The anammox reaction in the SBR remained stable and efficient at 20–33 °C, with a total nitrogen removal load of 0.4 g-N L−1 day−1 and an SAA of > 0.32 g-N g-VSS−1 day−1; 10 °C was the turning point for the anammox bacterial metabolic activity, at which the SAA decreased by 91% compared with that at 33 °C. After the temperature was returned to 22 °C, the anammox activity recovered to 0.24 g-N g-VSS−1 day−1. The apparent activation energy for the anammox reaction was 68.4 kJ mol−1 at 10–33 °C and 152.9 kJ mol−1 at 10–20 °C. High-throughput sequencing results revealed that Kuenenia was the dominant species of anammox bacteria, and Kuenenia had a higher tolerance to low temperature than Candidatus Brocadia and Candidatus Jettenia. This study clearly shows the effectiveness of anammox bioreactors for treatment of wastewater at ambient temperatures of 15–33 °C.