Quinoline-degrading strain Pseudomonas aeruginosa KDQ4 isolated from coking activated sludge is capable of the simultaneous removal of phenol in a dual substrate system

ABSTRACT

Quinoline is a refractory organic compound in the treatment of coking wastewater. The isolation of high efficiency quinoline-degrading bacteria from activated sludge and the evaluation of their degradation characteristics in the presence of phenol or in the actual coking wastewater are important for the improvement of effluent quality. The novel bacterial strain Pseudomonas aeruginosa KDQ4 was isolated from a quinoline enrichment culture obtained from the activated sludge of a coking wastewater treatment plant. The optimum temperature and initial pH for quinoline degradation were 33–38°C and 8–9, respectively. KDQ4 completely degraded 400 mg/L of quinoline within 24 h and 800 mg/L of phenol within 30 h. In the dual-substrate system, the removal efficiencies of quinoline and phenol at the same initial concentration (200 mg/L) by KDQ4 were 89% and 100% within 24 h, respectively, indicating that KDQ4 could simultaneously and quickly degrade quinoline and phenol in a coexistence system. Moreover, KDQ4 was able to adapt to actual coking wastewater containing high quinoline and phenol concentrations and rapidly remove them. KDQ4 also exhibited heterotrophic nitrification and aerobic denitrification potential under aerobic conditions. These results suggested a potential bioaugmentation role for KDQ4 in the removal of nitrogen-heterocyclic compounds and phenolics from coking wastewater.

KEYWORDS:

• Quinoline
• Pseudomonas aeruginosa KDQ4
• phenol
• denitrification

Acknowledgment

Panhong Zhang and Rong Jia contributed equally to this work. The authors wish to thank Dr. Jiping Zhu of Health Canada, Canada for his careful editing of the manuscript.

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 31370281) and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Grant No. 2010YH05).