Environmental Bacteria Involved in Manganese(II) Oxidation and Removal From Groundwater

The presence of iron (Fe) and manganese (Mn) in groundwater is an important concern in populations that use it as source of drinking water. The ingestion of high concentrations of these metals may affect human health. In addition, these metals cause aesthetic and organoleptic problems that affect water quality and also induce corrosion in distribution networks, generating operational and system maintenance problems. Biological sand filter systems are widely used to remove Fe and Mn from groundwater since they are a cost-effective technology and minimize the use of chemical oxidants. In this work, the bacterial communities of two biological water treatment plants from Argentina, exposed to long term presence of Mn(II) and with a high Mn(II) removal efficiency, were characterized using 16S rRNA gene Illumina sequencing. Several selective media were used to culture Mn-oxidizing bacteria (MOB) and a large number of known MOB and several isolates that have never been reported before as MOB were cultivated. These bacteria were characterized to select those with the highest Mn(II) oxidation and biofilm formation capacities and also those that can oxidize Mn(II) at different environmental growth conditions. In addition, studies were performed to determine if the selected MOB were able to oxidize Mn(II) present in groundwater while immobilized on sand. This work allowed the isolation of several bacterial strains adequate to develop an inoculum applicable to improve Mn(II) removal efficiency of sand filter water treatment plants.