The interaction of dissolved organic nitrogen removal and microbial abundance in iron-filings based green environmental media for stormwater treatment
Graphical abstract
Introduction
Nutrient pollution from nonpoint sources has been an increasing issue in stormwater treatment, with nitrogen and phosphorus being two primary contaminants of concern (Boserup, 2017; Chang et al., 2004; Commoner, 1991). Inorganic nitrogen such as nitrate (NO3−), nitrite (NO2), and ammonia (NH3)/ammonium (NH4+) in stormwater runoff can deteriorate the ecosystem structure and function in receiving water bodies. The impact of dissolved organic matters (DOMs), especially dissolved organic nitrogen (DON), has been investigated in drinking water treatment (Herzsprung et al., 2012; Liu et al., 2012) and wastewater treatment (Hu et al., 2018a). However, few studies have been performed in regard to the DON in real world stormwater runoff and the subsequent impact on nutrient removal in soils and filtration media (Chang et al., 2018a; Lusk and Toor, 2016a, 2016b). Deepening the understanding of the linkages between DON species and microbial ecology in soils and filtration media that affect nutrient removal in both the natural system and the built environment is thus deemed essential and critical (Chang et al., 2018a; Lusk and Toor, 2016a).
DON is the principal form of dissolved nitrogen in surface waters (Lusk and Toor, 2016b), which can be affected by land use and watershed characteristics (Pellerin et al., 2006). DON in surface waters corresponds to 0.5–10% of DOM by mass (de Vera et al., 2017). DON in surface waters is derived from soil leaching, wastewater disposal (Simsek et al., 2016), biological substances such as plants and algae (photosynthetic organisms), atmospheric deposition, and waste produced by living organisms (Jørgensen, 2009). DON compounds include nucleic acids (DNA and RNA), amino sugars, free amino acids, urea, and methylamines (Jørgensen, 2009). Aromatic compounds contain the second most abundant class of natural carbon, including lignins, tannins, and aromatic amino acids (Simon et al., 2005), in addition to man-made counterparts.
These DON species are difficult to remove in wastewater treatment plants and are often found in nature at a higher concentration than dissolved inorganic nitrogen (Berman and Bronk, 2003). In the nitrogen cycle, the utilization and assimilation of DON by microorganisms allows the cycling and reutilization of DON by particle-feeding organisms (Hu et al., 2018b; Jørgensen, 2009). The removal of nitrogen is strongly associated with the nitrogen-cycle via a suite of biogeochemical processes, such as nitrogen fixation, ammonification, nitrification, denitrification, and dissimilatory nitrate reduction to ammonium (DNRA), produced by chemical reactions, plant uptake, and microorganisms (O'Reilly et al., 2012a). The understanding of the nitrification pathway has been enhanced through the discovery of complete ammonia oxidation (comammox) by aerobic bacteria, which achieves both ammonia and nitrite oxidation (Annavajhala et al., 2018; Dang and Chen, 2017). This two-step nitrification process was originally believed to be completed separately by ammonia oxidizing bacteria (AOB) and nitrite oxidizing bacteria (NOB) (Costa et al., 2006; Koch et al., 2019).
New green sorption media technologies have been developed for in situ treatment of stormwater to prevent contaminants from reaching lakes, streams, and other water bodies (O'Reilly et al., 2012b; Beecham et al., 2012). Biosorption activated media (BAM) (Hood et al., 2013; O'Reilly et al., 2012a) and iron-filing green environmental media such as IFGEM-1and IFGEM-2 (Chang et al., 2018c) are a few of the many developed filtration media that have been proven cost-effective and sustainable for removing nitrogen and phosphorus in stormwater runoff. However, only physicochemical properties have been explored for IFGEM-1, IFGEM-2 (Chang et al., 2018b) and IFGEM-3 (Valencia et al., 2019). Thus, the continuous exploration of the microbiological properties of the IFGEM series is critical for field applications due to its inclusion of sand-iron aggregate (IFGEM-1) or clay-iron aggregate (IFGEM-2 and IFGEM-3).
Iron and aluminum are known as phosphate precipitation metals (Roncal-Herrero et al., 2009), and have been used for iron oxide coated sand (Khiadani et al., 2013; Zhang et al., 2010). However, high concentrations of iron and aluminum ions might impact the environment (Baby et al., 2010), and they can be transported along with other heavy metals, bacteria, and nutrients in urban stormwater runoff (Mason et al., 1999). These iron and aluminum ions could originate from vehicle emissions, human activities (Khiadani et al., 2013), roads, and roofs (Mason et al., 1999). Previous studies performed on soil have indicated that the presence of heavy metals decreases the microbial bioactivity and population growth of the bacteria in the nitrogen cycle (Kandeler et al., 1996). Further, the impact of copper on BAM and its effect on the microbial community has also been explored (Wen et al., 2018, 2020b). However, ferrous iron (Fe (II)) has the capacity to precipitate phosphate especially in the presence of calcium (Thistleton et al., 2002), and the presence of ferrous iron can also impact microbial ecology, since ferric iron (Fe (III)) can be reduced to the ferrous state by iron reducing bacteria (IRB) (Straub et al., 1996). While iron oxidation bacteria can oxidize ferrous iron in the presence of nitrate. Anammox can act as nitrate dependent ferrous iron oxidation bacteria since it oxidizes ferrous iron with nitrate as an electron acceptor (Strous et al., 2006); it can also act as a ferrous iron reducing bacteria to reduce ferric iron with organic matter as an electron donor (Van De Vossenberg et al., 2008). Nevertheless, the reduction of iron is normally more predominant than the oxidation of iron bacteria (Snoeyenbos-West et al., 2000).
Studies of dissimilatory iron-reducing bacteria (IRB) and its activity in aquifers (Kanso et al., 2002; Wildung et al., 2004) and sediments have been previously undertaken (Cooper et al., 2016; Todorova and Costello, 2006). Two of the major IRB species include Shewanella and Geobacter (Todorova and Costello, 2006). In sediments, the heterotrophic bacteria species of Geobacter (Lovley, 1993) are known for the reduction of ferric iron (Smith et al., 2013). Two common iron-reducing species are Geobacter sulfurreducens and Geobacter metallireducens, in which the Geobacter metallireducens specie has more characteristics than its counterpart, such as the anaerobic oxidation of aromatic hydrocarbons (Smith et al., 2013). Geobacter metallireducens are a common metal reducer, which can reduce Fe(III) and Mn(IV) to Fe(II) and Mn(II) (Snoeyenbos-West et al., 2000), which is beneficial given that Fe(II) is the most soluble form of iron (Lee et al., 2002) that can be used for phosphate precipitation. Apart from reducing iron under anaerobic conditions, G. metallireducens can oxidize organic matter, such as aromatic hydrocarbons, to carbon dioxide with ferric iron as an electron acceptor (Lovley et al., 1993, 2004), while other members of this family can transfer electrons to insoluble metal oxides (Simon et al., 2005). Thus, DON can be utilized as food for different microbial bacteria, such as IRB (Amon et al., 2001).
Nitrogen augmentation for better ammonia nitrogen removal can influence the microbial community in the soil directly and indirectly via changes in soil pH (Zeng et al., 2016). According to Judd et al. (2006), changes in the microbial community were produced from changes in DOM. In stormwater, nitrogen (N) exists as NO3−, NO2−, NH3, and NH4+, as well as dissolved organic nitrogen. However, inorganic N can be assimilated by plants and microorganisms into organic N (Collins et al., 2010). As parts of the nitrogen cycle, nitrification, denitrification, and ammonification processes can occur via physical, chemical, and biological interactions (van Breemen, 2002). The structure and function of microbial communities can perhaps be affected by the quantity and quality of DOM (Logue et al., 2016). Therefore, the retrieval of DON information is important for a deepened understanding of its role in an ecosystem, given that DOM can potentially provide carbon and nitrogen sources to microorganisms in the nitrogen cycle (Eppley and Peterson, 1979). DON information can be retrieved with Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance spectrometry (FT-ICR-MS) (Eppley and Peterson, 1979). Furthermore, calcium and other chemicals present in stormwater can provide higher removal based on their reactions. Calcium concentrations in Florida can vary from 23.8 mg/L (Jones, 2013) to 2–4.6 mg/L in ponds, and 33–91.1 mg/L in rivers and streams (Dodd et al., 2017). Alkalinity may be examined as a substitute to determine its effect on nutrient removal if calcium cannot be directly measured in a study.
Hence, the objectives of this study are to: 1) compare the nutrient removal efficiencies of BAM, IFGEM, and natural soil at varying stormwater influent conditions in terms of the ammonia, total nitrogen (TN), total phosphorus (TP), 2) determine the impact that iron filing content has on bacteria growth and nutrient removal, and 3) explore the impact microbial communities have on DON removal under distinct stormwater conditions. The research questions to be explored are: 1) How do the varying influent nutrient concentrations impact the removal efficiencies of TN, TP, and ammonia in different filtration media? 2) How does iron filing as a media component in IFGEM-3 (new media with clay-iron aggregate) and IFGEM-1 (existing media with sand-iron aggregate) alter the efficiency of TP removal and its impact on the microbial ecology? 3) How do the microbial ecologies of BAM and IFGEM differ in terms of nitrification, denitrification, ammonification, and DNRA? 4) How can the DON composition/concentration be affected if DON is utilized by iron bacteria in IFGEM? 5) How can microbial assimilation of DON affect nitrogen composition? We hypothesize that: 1) the anammox population may be enhanced by the presence of iron as a media component, 2) IRB can exhibit a higher population in IFGEM, 3) the microbial communities can utilize and transform DOM, specifically DON obtained from stormwater, to enhance their growth, especially in IFGEM, and 4) more DON utilization may be present due to bacteria, such as IRB and DNRA, that make up the microbial ecology in IFGEM-3, resulting in a lower DON concentration and more variation of DON composition in the effluent. To answer these questions, a fixed-bed column study with four identical columns filled with IFGEM-1, IFGEM-3, BAM, and natural soil, respectively, was performed, as explained in the next section.
Section snippets
Properties of filtration media and natural soil
Natural soil and three green sorption media were selected for this experiment. The natural soil for this study was collected from a basin (known as Basin 9 B) located in Silver Springs, close to Silver Springs State Park in Florida. The soil from this basin was utilized as a control (base) in order to compare its nutrient removal with those of the three different green sorption media (filtration media). The media composition by weight for each green sorption media is detailed in Table 1. The
Hydraulic retention time and soil moisture
The result of the hydraulic pattern pertaining to the infiltration and time required for stormwater to leave the system for each column is presented in Fig. 3. An extensive HRT of 726 min (12.1 h) was observed in natural soil, while IFGEM-1 and IFGEM-3 experienced similar HRTs of 137 min (2.28 h) and 124 min (2.25 h), respectively. The shortest HRT was observed in BAM at 73 min (1.22 h). The hydraulic patterns (HRT) herein pertain to the time for infiltration of stormwater during the
Physical and chemical parameters in this column study
Hydraulic characteristics can reflect the impact of biological activity on media components and biofilm growth. Conversely, excessive biofilm growth can decrease infiltration, thus reducing HRT. The difference between the HRT of natural soil, BAM, IFGEM-1, and IFGEM-3 can be attributed to clay content. The longer HRT of the natural soil in this study had high clay content, which significantly decreases water infiltration, providing an opportunity for the influent to pond at the top section thus
Conclusion
In this study, the ammonia, total phosphorus and total nitrogen removals obtained for natural soil, BAM, IFGEM 1, and IFGEM 3 at three different spiked stormwater conditions confirmed IFGEM-3 sorption media as the most appropriate for nutrient removal. Providing appropriate biological and chemical reactions enhanced nutrient removal through interactions that precipitated and assimilated phosphorus and nitrogen. DON in stormwater can be utilized, benefiting microbial communities that decompose
Credit author statement
Andrea Valencia, performed lab-scale column study and real-time PCR data analysis. Diana Ordonez, performed lab-scale column study and real-time PCR data analysis. Dan Wen, conducted FT-ICR-MS analysis. Amy M. McKenna conducted FT-ICR-MS analysis. Ni-Bin Chang, proposed the IFGEM composition and research framework and improved part of the data analyses. Martin P. Wanielista, proposed the IFGEM composition and research framework and improved part of the data analyses. All authors wrote the
Declaration of competing interest
The authors have no competing interest of this study.
Acknowledgment
The authors appreciate the funding and technical advice provided by the Florida Department of Transportation (Grant No. BDV24 977–20). A portion of this work for DON analysis was performed at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory ICR User Facility, which is supported by the National Science Foundation Division of Chemistry and Division of Materials Research through DMR-1644779 and the State of Florida. The opinions, findings and conclusions expressed in this publication are those of the
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2022, Separation and Purification TechnologyCitation Excerpt :The media CTS, comprising 5% clay, 10% tire crumb, and 85% sand [87,60] was selected as a control and compared with the ZVI-based media IFGEM, comprised of 5% ZVI, 4% clay, and 91% sand. In a previous study by [81], CTS exhibited removals of up to 92.81% for total phosphorus and 70.70% for total nitrogen demonstrating nutrient removal potential. CTS was selected as a control in the current study given the absence of ZVI as component of the media matrix aiding to understand the role ZVI plays in the filtration media.