Applications of Microorganisms in Wastewater Treatment Processes

A special issue of Processes (ISSN 2227-9717). This special issue belongs to the section "Environmental and Green Processes".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 January 2026 | Viewed by 630

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
School of Energy and Environmental Engineering, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing 100083, China
Interests: biological nitrogen removal technology

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Guest Editor
Institute of Nuclear and New Energy Technology, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
Interests: biological recovery of value-added chemicals from wastewater and waste activated sludge

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Guest Editor
School of Environment, South China Normal University, Guangzhou 510006, China
Interests: anammox; industrial wastewater biological treatment

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

With the rapid promotion of urbanization and industrialization, the quantity of wastewater generated from production and daily life has been increasing annually, posing negative impacts on ecological environments and economic development. Compared to physical and chemical methods, biological treatments capitalize on the metabolic functions of microorganisms within systems to degrade and transform pollutants, thereby possessing numerous advantages in achieving wastewater purification. Due to their high treatment efficiency, low investment and operational costs, and convenient operation and management, biological methods have become one of the widely adopted approaches in the field of wastewater treatment.

This Special Issue, entitled “Applications of Microorganisms in Wastewater Treatment Processes”, will curate research which focuses on novel advances in process optimization and/or explores the intrinsic mechanisms of microorganisms applied in wastewater treatments. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, methods and/or applications in the following areas:

  1. Industrial-wastewater biological treatment;
  2. Nutrient (N and P) removal;
  3. Heavy-metal removal;
  4. Emerging-contaminant biodegradation;
  5. Bioflocculants;
  6. Microbial immobilization;
  7. Microbial fuel cells;
  8. Wastewater biorecovery.

Dr. Yunmeng Pang
Dr. Yanan Yin
Dr. Zhenguo Chen
Guest Editors

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Keywords

  • industrial-wastewater biological treatment
  • nutrient (N and P) removal
  • heavy-metal removal
  • emerging-contaminant biodegradation
  • bioflocculants
  • microbial immobilization
  • microbial fuel cells
  • wastewater biorecovery

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

18 pages, 18559 KiB  
Article
Dynamic Restoration of Collapsed Anammox Biofilm Systems: Integrating Process Optimization, Microbial Community Succession, and Machine Learning-Based Prediction
by Li Wang, Yongxing Chen, Junfeng Yang, Jiayi Li, Yu Zhang and Xiaojun Wang
Processes 2025, 13(6), 1672; https://doi.org/10.3390/pr13061672 - 26 May 2025
Viewed by 28
Abstract
The majority of extant studies concentrate on the reactivation of dormant Anammox biomass or the recovery of activity under specific storage conditions. Research on rehabilitation strategies for anaerobic ammonium oxidation (Anammox) systems is limited, with the exception of research on inhibitory factors. The [...] Read more.
The majority of extant studies concentrate on the reactivation of dormant Anammox biomass or the recovery of activity under specific storage conditions. Research on rehabilitation strategies for anaerobic ammonium oxidation (Anammox) systems is limited, with the exception of research on inhibitory factors. The recovery characteristics of biofilm systems after collapse induced by varying degrees of ammonia-nitrogen and small-molecular organic compound composite shocks have not been thoroughly elucidated. This study addresses the collapse of Anammox biofilm systems caused by sodium acetate inhibition through multi-phase rehabilitation strategies, stoichiometric analysis, and microbial community succession dynamics. Two regression algorithms—Support Vector Regression (SVR) and eXtreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost)—were employed to construct predictive models for Total Nitrogen Removal Efficiency (TNRE) and Total Nitrogen Removal Rate (TNRR) in the CANON system, with model performance evaluated via coefficient of determination (R2) and root mean square error (RMSE). Results demonstrated that after terminating moderate-to-high sodium acetate dosing (300 mg/L and 500 mg/L), reactors R300 and R500 achieved TNRE recovery to 57.98% and 58.86%, respectively, and TNRR of 0.281 and 0.275 kgN/m3·d within 60–100 days, indicating the reversibility of high-concentration sodium acetate inhibition but a positive correlation between recovery duration and inhibition intensity. Microbial community analysis revealed that Planctomycetota (including Candidatus_Kuenenia) rebounded to 46–49% relative abundance in R100, synchronized with TNRE improvement. In contrast, R300 and R500 exhibited ecological niche replacement of denitrifiers (Denitratisoma) and partial TNRE restoration despite enhanced performance. Model comparisons showed SVR outperformed XGBoost in TNRE prediction, whereas XGBoost demonstrated superior TNRR prediction accuracy with R2 approaching 1 and RMSE nearing 0, significantly surpassing SVR. This work provides critical insights into recovery mechanisms under organic inhibition stress and establishes a robust predictive framework for optimizing nitrogen removal performance in CANON systems. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Applications of Microorganisms in Wastewater Treatment Processes)
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