Engineering a biofilters microbiome with activated carbon and bioaugmentation to improve stormwater micropollutant removal

Harnessing prokaryotes’ metabolic capacity and adaptive potential is of interest for environmental bioremediation and biological treatment of domestic and industrial waste. Bioaugmentation is commonly implicated in the cleanup of high-dosed environmental pollution. In this study, Arthrobacter aurescens TC1 was used to augment biofiltration systems for bioremediation of stormwater micropollutant. Bioaugmentation was tested on non-vegetated and vegetated system designs, with or without an adsorbent biocarrier [granulated activated carbon (GAC)]. This study investigated how system design affects microbial function and structure. It focused on long-term metabolic responses of the biofilter’s microbiome to low chronic exposure to the herbicide atrazine and fluctuations in atrazine load. Shotgun metagenomics analyses demonstrated that the major contributor to microbiome structure was the supplementation of GAC. Vegetation affected microbiome structure mainly in sand biofilter-media. GAC showed a significant shift in atrazine-degrading genes over time compared to sand. Diversity and richness increased with time in all system designs, regardless of atrazine load fluctuations. To conclude, incorporating GAC in stormwater-biofiltration systems effectively enhances the micropollutant-biodegradation capacity in stormwater with negligible effects on the biofilter’s microbiome diversity and function.