Development of a Short-Cut Combined Magnetic Coagulation–Sequence Batch Membrane Bioreactor for Swine Wastewater Treatment

A high concentration of suspended solids (SS) in swine wastewater reduces the efficiency of the biological treatment process. The current study developed a short-cut combined magnetic coagulation (MC)–sequence batch membrane bioreactor (SMBR) process to treat swine wastewater. Compared with the single SMBR process, the combined process successfully achieved similarly high removal efficiencies of chemical oxygen demand (COD), total nitrogen (TN), ammonium nitrogen (NH4+-N), and total phosphorous (TP) of 96.0%, 97.6%, 99.0%, and 69.1%, respectively, at dosages of 0.5 g/L of poly aluminium chloride (PAC), 2 mg/L of polyacrylamide (PAM), and 1 g/L of magnetic seeds in Stage II, and concentrations of TN, COD, and NH4+-N in effluent can meet the discharge standards for pollutants for livestock and poultry breeding (GB18596-2001, China). The nitrogen removal loading (NRL) was increased from 0.21 to 0.28 kg/(m3·d), and the hydraulic retention time (HRT) was shortened from 5.0 days to 4.3 days. High-throughput sequencing analysis was carried out to investigate microbial community evolution, and the results showed that the relative abundance of ammonia-oxidizing bacteria (AOB) in the SMBR increased from 0.1% without pre-treatment to 1.78% with the pre-treatment of MC.