Process Performance and Microbial Community Structure of an Anaerobic Baffled Reactor for Natural Rubber Processing Wastewater Treatment

Natural rubber processing wastewater contains high concentration of organic compounds mainly acids and ammonia. This wastewater also contains large amount of residual rubber particles. In this study, a laboratory-scale experiment was conducted to evaluate process performance of anaerobic baffled reactor (ABR) treating this wastewater. In addition, microbial community structure in different compartments of ABR was characterized. The highest COD removal efficiency of 92.3 ± 6.3% was observed when operated under organic loading rate of 1.4 ± 0.3 kg-COD·m−3·day−1. Maximum methane gas production of 29.8 NL·day−1 was observed on day 177. Massively parallel next generation sequencing showed the difference of acetogen community could be caused by the difference in pH of these compartments. Acetate utilizing methanogen Methanosaeta was predominantly detected in the 3rd and 4th compartments with abundance of 9.8% to 16.4%. This result indicated that the ABR is considered as a novel applicable treatment system for this wastewater.