Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jun 24, 2026

A Novel Bioreactor for High Density Cultivation of Diverse Microbial Communities
Published on: December 25, 2015
Effects of short solids retention time on microbial community in a membrane bioreactor
Liang Duan1, Ivan Moreno-Andrade, Chun-Lin Huang
1State Key Laboratory of Pollution Control and Resource Reuse, Key Laboratory of Yangtze River Water Environment, Ministry of Education, College of Environmental Science and Engineering, Tongji University, Shanghai 200092, PR China.
Abstract:
Effects of operating lab-scale nitrifying membrane bioreactors (MBR) at short solids retention times (SRT=3, 5 and 10d) were presented with focus on reactor performance and microbial community composition. The process was capable of achieving over 87% removal of ammonia and 95% removal of chemical oxygen demand (COD), almost regardless of SRT. The denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE) analysis shown that bacterial communities evolved in time in a similar way at different SRT. The results of clone library analysis indicated that Betaproteobacteria was the dominant bacterial group in all the reactors but there were significant difference of species for different SRT with higher species diversity at longer SRT. Ammonia and COD removal efficiencies were not correlated with the number of bacterial species or their diversity.
Related Concept Videos
Microbial Wastewater Treatment
Microbial Mats
Bioreactor Design and Operational System
Bioreactor Controls-II
Marine Microbial Ecology
Microenvironments

