Acrylonitrile removal from synthetic wastewater and actual industrial wastewater with high strength nitrogen using a pure bacteria culture

A gram-negative rod-shaped bacteria (strain AAS6), capable of utilizing acr ylonitrile as the sole source of both carbon and nitrogen, was utilized to investigate the removal of acrylonitrile in ABS resin manufacturing wastewa ter. Both synthetic wastewater, containing a high concentration of acryloni trile, and actual wastewater obtained from an ABS manufacturing factory wer e used. The result indicated that strain AAS6 was capable of completely rem oving acrylonitrile from synthetic wastewater containing less than 889 mg/l acrylonitrile and from actual industrial wastewater containing less than 4 00 mg/l acrylonitrile. Whether in synthetic wastewater or actual industrial wastewater, strain AAS6 showed approximately the same ability for acryloni trile removal and used acrylic acid, a metabolic by-product of acrylonitril e, as the carbon source and ammonium as the nitrogen source. The bacteria c ould not directly metabolize other chemicals found in the actual industrial wastewater. However, its metabolic activities were not inhibited by the pr esence of compounds such as butadiene, styrene or acrylonitrile-styrene pol ymer. Thus, this strain is expected to play an important role in aeration t anks for treating ABS resin manufacturing wastewater.