Microbial community structure and functions in ethanol-fed sulphate removal bioreactors for treatment of mine water. Microbial communities in sulphate removal bioreactors

The microbial community of bacteria, archaea and fungi in three laboratory-scale bioreactors for biological sulphate removal from mine water was characterized by high throughput Iontorrent PGM amplicon sequencing targeting the 16S rRNA gene of the archaea and bacteria and the ITS1 fragment of the fungi. Anaerobic granular sludge from an industrial wastewater treatment plant was used as inoculum and charaterized in the same way as the bioreactor samples.