Temperature modulating sand-consolidating cyanobacterial biomass, nutrients removal and bacterial community dynamics in municipal wastewater

Abstract Cultivating sand-consolidating cyanobacteria using wastewater has unique advantages on both nutrients recycling and ecological restoration by transferring excessive nutrients from wastewaters to desert areas. Although previous study showed that sand-consolidating cyanobacterium well adapted to synthetic domestic wastewater, no study has been carried out on actual wastewater. This study aims to investigate the sand-consolidating cyanobacterial biomass production and nutrients removal by cultivating Scytonema hyalinum in the municipal wastewater under different temperatures. The results showed that biomass accumulation increased with temperature from 20℃ to 30℃, while severely depressed at 35℃. More than 81.63% sCOD, 90.64% TDN and 97.08% TDP were removed by day 30 under each temperature except for 35℃. The inoculation of S. hyalinum strongly regulated the native wastewater bacterial community. These results indicated that sand-consolidating cyanobacterium S. hyalinum well adapted to municipal wastewater and temperature had remarkable effects on cyanobacterial biomass accumulation, nutrients removal and wastewater native bacterial community dynamics.