Issue 43, 2020, Issue in Progress

Degradation pathway and microbial mechanism of high-concentration thiocyanate in gold mine tailings wastewater

Abstract

As one of the inorganic pollutants with the highest concentration in the waste water of gold tailings using biohydrometallurgy, thiocyanate (SCN) was effectively degraded in this research adopting a two-stage activated sludge biological treatment, and the corresponding degradation pathway and microbial community characteristics in this process were also studied. The results showed that SCN at 1818.00 mg L−1 in the influent decreased to 0.68 mg L−1 after flowing through the two-stage activated sludge units. Raman spectroscopy was used to study the changes of relevant functional groups, finding that SCN was degraded in the COS pathway. Based on 16S rRNA high-throughput sequencing technology, the microbial diversity in this system was analyzed, and the results indicated that Thiobacillus played a major role in degrading SCN, of which the abundance in these two activated sludge units was 32.05% and 20.37%, respectively. The results further revealed the biological removal mechanism of SCN in gold mine tailings wastewater.

Graphical abstract: Degradation pathway and microbial mechanism of high-concentration thiocyanate in gold mine tailings wastewater

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
14 Apr 2020
Accepted
26 Jun 2020
First published
07 Jul 2020
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY license

RSC Adv., 2020,10, 25679-25684

Degradation pathway and microbial mechanism of high-concentration thiocyanate in gold mine tailings wastewater

L. Li, F. Yue, Y. Li, A. Yang, J. Li, Y. Lv and X. Zhong, RSC Adv., 2020, 10, 25679 DOI: 10.1039/D0RA03330H

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence. You can use material from this article in other publications without requesting further permissions from the RSC, provided that the correct acknowledgement is given.

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