Performance of a recirculated biogas-sparging anaerobic membrane bioreactor system for treating synthetic swine wastewater containing sulfadiazine antibiotic

Anaerobic Membrane Bioreactor (AnMBR) is an efficient system for treating synthetic swine wastewater (SW). However, the presence of antibiotics in SW discourages the activity of microorganisms, resulting in less pollutants removal and biogas production. In this paper, a recirculated biogas-sparging anaerobic membrane bioreactor system was used to treat swine wastewater containing sulfadiazine (SDZ). The effects of different concentrations of SDZ on the AnMBR system’s performance were explored, in terms of pollutant removal, biogas production, membrane fouling and microbial community. Results indicated that the larger concentration of SDZ triggered a strong suppression in the system’s performance. When treating 1.0 mg/L SDZ, the biogas-sparging AnMBR system achieved about 77 % COD removal and 0.23 L/g CODremoved biogas production, which without SDZ fell to 21 % COD being removed and dropped biogas production by 30 %. As well, the presence of SDZ (1.0 mg L) increased by about half the amount of soluble microbial product (SMP) and extracellular polymeric substances (EPS) with lower protein/polysaccharide ratio and reduced sludge particle size by 49 %. Meanwhile, microbial community analysis revealed that the abundance of Firmicutes increased while Chloroflexi diminished. These jointly contributed to a shorter membrane fouling cycle declining from the initial 23 d to 7 d. Furthermore, the shift from acetoclastic methanogens to hydrogenotrophic methanogens resulted in less methane production due to the presence of SDZ, while the hydrogenotrophic methanogen Methanobacterium promoted the degradation of SDZ. The work showed AnMBR can effectively treat swine wastewater containing antibiotics and provides basis for practical application.