Acclimation, manganese removal, and backwash impact on full‐scale drinking water biofilter microbiome

Biofiltration for drinking water treatment has several quality benefits but questions remain about biofilter start-up in temperate climates where temperature and changes can impact performance. A year-long full-scale demonstration was performed with biofilters operated parallel to chlorinated filters (O1) monitor the development of microbiota across acclimation period respect removal Mn total organic carbon, (O2) determine depth backwash events on microbial community composition function. Biofilter media biomass increased first 6 months operation after 9 achieved comparable filters. Prokaryotic diversity decreased when dropped. Backwash resulted an increase deeper biofilter. By next sampling (30 h post backwash), 16S rRNA gene copies were again more abundant upper layers. Metagenomic sequencing confirmed presence moxA mofA, oxidizing genes. The results presented help inform expected performance climates.