PLoS ONE (Jan 2021)

Elucidate microbial characteristics in a full-scale treatment plant for offshore oil produced wastewater.

  • Shuyuan Deng,
  • Bo Wang,
  • Wenda Zhang,
  • Sanbao Su,
  • Hao Dong,
  • Ibrahim M Banat,
  • Shanshan Sun,
  • Jianping Guo,
  • Weiming Liu,
  • Linhai Wang,
  • Yuehui She,
  • Fan Zhang

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0255836
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 16, no. 8
p. e0255836

Abstract

Read online

Oil-produced wastewater treatment plants, especially those involving biological treatment processes, harbor rich and diverse microbes. However, knowledge of microbial ecology and microbial interactions determining the efficiency of plants for oil-produced wastewater is limited. Here, we performed 16S rDNA amplicon sequencing to elucidate the microbial composition and potential microbial functions in a full-scale well-worked offshore oil-produced wastewater treatment plant. Results showed that microbes that inhabited the plant were diverse and originated from oil and marine associated environments. The upstream physical and chemical treatments resulted in low microbial diversity. Organic pollutants were digested in the anaerobic baffled reactor (ABR) dominantly through fermentation combined with sulfur compounds respiration. Three aerobic parallel reactors (APRs) harbored different microbial groups that performed similar potential functions, such as hydrocarbon degradation, acidogenesis, photosynthetic assimilation, and nitrogen removal. Microbial characteristics were important to the performance of oil-produced wastewater treatment plants with biological processes.