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ORIGINAL RESEARCH
Denitrifying Bacteria as a Scale Inhibitor
of Carbon Steel in Circulating Cooling
Water from a Coal Power Plant
1
National Engineering Research Center for Environment-friendly Metallurgy in Producing Premium Non-ferrous Metals,
GRINM Group Co., Ltd., Beijing 101407, China
2
School of Metallurgy, Northeastern University, Shenyang, 110819, China
3
GRINM Resources and Environment Tech. Co., Ltd., Beijing 101407, China
4
General Research Institute for Nonferrous Metals, Beijing 100088, China
5
Institute of Earth Science, China University of Geosciences, Beijing 100083, China
6
College of water resources and environment, China University of Geosciences, Beijing 100083, China
Submission date: 2024-07-23
Final revision date: 2024-11-06
Acceptance date: 2024-12-16
Online publication date: 2025-03-17
Publication date: 2026-01-30
Corresponding author
Xiao Yan
National Engineering Research Center for Environment-friendly Metallurgy in Producing Premium Non-ferrous Metals, GRINM Group Co., Ltd., Beijing 101407, China
National Engineering Research Center for Environment-friendly Metallurgy in Producing Premium Non-ferrous Metals, GRINM Group Co., Ltd., Beijing 101407, China
Pol. J. Environ. Stud. 2026;35(1):1245-1259
KEYWORDS
TOPICS
ABSTRACT
Improving circulating water utilization efficiency is significant for thermal power plants to reduce
costs and increase operational efficiency. This study chose denitrifying bacteria (Denitrobacillus
licheniformis EM1) as the microbial agent to investigate its anti-scaling and anti-corrosion performance
in the circulating cooling water system from the coal power plant. The calcium carbonate deposition test
and coupon test results indicated that denitrifying bacteria could increase the scale inhibition rate of
the cooling water system by approximately 25.23% and the corrosion rate from 0.0773 to 0.1074 mm/a.
Surface characterization and microbial community analysis were employed to explore the underlying
mechanism. Acid production from metabolism and bacterial community shift were speculated to be the
main contributors to the anti-scaling capacity of the denitrifying bacteria. This study provides a deeper
understanding of the anti-scaling mechanisms of functional strains in microbial agents. This will assist
in the advanced development and application of microbial agents in scaling control.
CONFLICT OF INTEREST
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
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| eISSN: | 2083-5906 |
| ISSN: | 1230-1485 |
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