Identification of factors affecting removal of antibiotic resistance genes in full-scale anaerobic digesters treating organic solid wastes

Abstract

Efficiencies of removing antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) and intI1 were explored using eight full-scale anaerobic digesters. The digesters demonstrated different characteristics on the basis of substrate types (food waste, manure or sludge); configuration (single or two-stage); temperature (psychrophilic, mesophilic or thermophilic); hydraulic retention time (HRT) (9.7–44 days); and operation mode (continuous stirred tank reactor or plug flow reactor). Digesters’ configuration or operating parameters showed a greater effect on abundance of ARGs than the type of input substrate. Redundancy analysis (RDA) accounted for 85.2% of the total variances and digesters with the same configuration and operational conditions showed similar performance for removal of ARGs. The highest efficiencies of removing ARGs (99.99%) were observed in two-stage thermophilic digesters with relatively long HRTs (32 days). The lowest removal efficiency (97.93%) was observed in single-stage mesophilic with relatively short HRTs (9.7 days), likely due to vertical and horizontal gene transfer.