Microbial community from low-temperature anaerobic digestor treating synthetic sewage (raw sequence reads)

Two granular sludges showing optimum performance on simple substrates at lower temperature (therefore previously acclimated and psychrotolerant) were chosen to seed a hybrid granular sludge bed fixed-film (fixed-film composed of granular pumice stone) treating reactor synthetic domestic sewage. In this experiment, the efficiency of long-term (732 days) cold (12°C) anaerobic treatment of this substrate was tested. The hydraulic retention time (HRT) was decreased from 36 to 8hr over the trial. The microbial community was assessed over the course of the trial in order to link process parameters to microbial community function.Our hypotheses were that high levels of P removal during AD would be achievable during high-rate treatment of synthetic sewage at low-temperature, in conjunction with highly efficient, low-temperature methanogenic biodegradation of the solid, colloidal and soluble fractions of a sewage wastewater: (i) at loading rates >1 kg total COD m-3 day-1; (ii) while producing an effluent quality of <125 mg total COD l-1; (iii) with microbial community development resulting in increased hydrolytic, acidogenic and methanogenic activity at low-temperatures.