Methanotrophic denitrification in wastewater treatment: microbial aspects and engineering strategies

Anaerobic technologies are consolidated for sewage treatment and are the core processes for mining marketable products from waste streams. However, anaerobic effluents are supersaturated with methane, which represents a liability regarding greenhouse gas emissions. Meanwhile, anaerobic technologies are not capable of nitrogen removal, which is required to ensure environmental protection. Methane oxidation and denitrification processes can be combined to address both issues concurrently. Aerobic methane oxidizers can release intermediate organic compounds that can be used by conventional denitrifiers as electron donors. Alternatively, anoxic methanotrophic species combine methane oxidation with either nitrate or nitrite reduction in the same metabolism. Engineered systems need to overcome the long doubling times and low NOx consumption rates of anoxic methanotrophic microorganisms. Another commonly reported bottleneck of methanotrophic denitrification relates to gas-liquid mass transfer limitations. Although anaerobic effluents are supersaturated with methane, experimental setups usually rely on methane supply in a gaseous mode. Hence, possibilities for the application of methane-oxidation coupled to denitrification in full scale might be overlooked. Moreover, syntrophic relationships among methane oxidizers, denitrifiers, nitrifiers, and other microorganisms (such as anammox) are not well understood. Integrating mixed populations with various metabolic abilities could allow for more robust methane-driven wastewater denitrification systems. This review presents an overview of the metabolic capabilities of methane oxidation and denitrification and discusses technological aspects that allow for the application of methanotrophic denitrification at larger scales.