The effects of non-metallic organic tanning agents on the microbial community structure in wastewater

Abstract Non-metallic organic tanning agents were used during the leather processing, most of them will be combined with the collagen converted it into leather. But there still some of its components were discarded into the wastewater and caused serious environmental problems. In this study, the structure character of microbial communities in leather wastewater containing non-metallic organic tanning agents and the effect of the leather wastewater on the ecology of the microorganisms were studied with the high-throughput sequencing. The results show that the presence of 1,657, 49 bacterial and fungal OTUs (Operational Taxonomic Unit), at 97 % similarity level. Significant differences on microbial community composition in wastewater were observed in systems containing different non-metallic organic tanning agents. The Firmicutes and proteobacteria were dominated bacteria in T1, T3, T8, KB and T6. Ascomycota and Basidiomycota were the most richness fungi in T1, T3, T6, T8 and KB. The relative abundance of dominant bacteria pseudodomonas was significantly positively correlated with TN, NH3, and TOC (0.01