Real-time monitoring of water quality of stream water using sulfur-oxidizing bacteria as bio-indicator.
Sedky H A Hassan, Anup Gurung, Woo-Chang Kang, Beom-Soo Shin, Mostafa Rahimnejad, Byong-Hun Jeon, Jung Rae Kim, Sang-Eun Oh
Author Information
Sedky H A Hassan: Department of Biological Environment, Kangwon National University, 192-1 Hyoja-2-dong, Gangwondo, Chuncheon, 200-701, South Korea; Botany & Microbiology Department, Faculty of Science, New Valley University, 72511, El-Kharga, Egypt.
Anup Gurung: Department of Biological Environment, Kangwon National University, 192-1 Hyoja-2-dong, Gangwondo, Chuncheon, 200-701, South Korea.
Woo-Chang Kang: Department of Biological Environment, Kangwon National University, 192-1 Hyoja-2-dong, Gangwondo, Chuncheon, 200-701, South Korea.
Beom-Soo Shin: Department of Biosystems Engineering, Kangwon National University, Gangwon-do, South Korea.
Mostafa Rahimnejad: Biotechnology Research Lab., Faculty of Chemical Engineering, Noshirvani University, Babol, Iran.
Byong-Hun Jeon: Department of Natural Resources and Environment Engineering, Hanyang University, Seoul, 133-791, Republic of Korea.
Jung Rae Kim: School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Pusan National University, Busan, 46241, Republic of Korea.
Sang-Eun Oh: Department of Biological Environment, Kangwon National University, 192-1 Hyoja-2-dong, Gangwondo, Chuncheon, 200-701, South Korea. Electronic address: ohsangeun@kangwon.ac.kr.
In aquatic ecosystems, real-time water-quality (WQ) biomonitoring has become the most effective technology for monitoring toxic events by using living organisms as a biosensor. In this study, an online WQ monitoring system using sulfur oxidizing bacteria (SOB) was tested to monitor WQ changes in real-time in natural stream water. The WQ monitoring system consisted of three SOB reactors (one continuous and two semi-continuous mode reactors). The SOB system did not detect any toxicity in relatively-unpolluted, natural stream water when operated for more than six months. When diluted swine wastewater (50:1) was added to the influent of the reactors, the system detected toxic conditions in both the continuous and semi-continuous operational modes, showing 90% inhibition of SOB activity within 1 h of operation. The addition of 30 mg/L NO-N or 2 mg/L of Cr to the influents of SOB reactors resulted in the complete inhibition of the SOB activity within 1-2 h. The results demonstrated the successful application of an SOB bioassay as an online toxicity monitoring system for detecting pollutants from stream or river waters.
