Degradation pathway and microbial mechanism of high-concentration thiocyanate in gold mine tailings wastewater.

As one of the inorganic pollutants with the highest concentration in the waste water of gold tailings using biohydrometallurgy, thiocyanate (SCN) was effectively degraded in this research adopting a two-stage activated sludge biological treatment, and the corresponding degradation pathway and microbial community characteristics in this process were also studied. The results showed that SCN at 1818.00 mg L in the influent decreased to 0.68 mg L after flowing through the two-stage activated sludge units. Raman spectroscopy was used to study the changes of relevant functional groups, finding that SCN was degraded in the COS pathway. Based on 16S rRNA high-throughput sequencing technology, the microbial diversity in this system was analyzed, and the results indicated that played a major role in degrading SCN, of which the abundance in these two activated sludge units was 32.05% and 20.37%, respectively. The results further revealed the biological removal mechanism of SCN in gold mine tailings wastewater.