Abstract
•A/O-A/O-MBR showed good performances for leachate treatment.•COD, NH4+-N and TN removal was the highest under a HRT of 7 d.•Microbial structure was successfully studied via Illumina Miseq sequencing.
Two-stage anoxic/oxic combined membrane bioreactor (A/O-A/O-MBR) process was used to treat leachate generated from Shenyang Laohuchong landfill, and the effect of hydraulic retention time (HRT) was studied. A long HRT of 9 d and a short HRT of 5 d showed negative effect on the stability of process, resulting in a higher organic concentration of effluent than that with a HRT of 7 d, while the highest removal of chemical oxygen demand (COD), ammonia (NH4+-N) and total nitrogen (TN) were achieved with a HRT of 7 d, which was 82.4%, 99.1% and 75.3% respectively. The analysis of microbial communities by high-throughput sequencing showed that phyla Proteobacteria and Bacteroidetes were the dominant bacteria, which accounted for 36.63–42.39%, 29.21–38.66%, respectively. For genus classification, the most representative of Ferruginibacter, unclassified-Saprospiraceae and Nitrosomonas accounted for 20.76–35.11% totally. The other communities, including Nitrobacter, Planctomyces, Rhodobacteraceae and Nitrospirae, were also developed for organic degradation and denitrification.