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The gas-to-liquid (GTL) process generates considerable amounts of wastewater that are highly acidic and characterized by its high chemical oxygen demand (COD) content, due to the presence of several organic pollutants, such as alcohols, ketones, aldehydes, and fatty acids. The presence of these organics in the process water may lead to adverse effect on the environment and aquatic life. Thus, it is necessary to reduce the COD content of GTL process water to an acceptable limit before discharging or reusing the treated water. Due to several advantages, biological treatment is often utilized as the main step in GTL process water treatment plants. In order to have a successful biotreatment process, it is required to choose effective and suitable bacterial strains that have the ability to degrade the organic pollutants in GTL process water. In this work, bacterial strains were isolated from the GTL process water, identified by 16S rRNA gene sequencing and then used in the biodegradation process. The detailed identification of the strains confirmed the presence of three organics-degrading bacteria identified as Alcaligenes faecalis, Stenotrophomonas sp., and Ochrobactrum sp. Furthermore, biodegradation experiments were carried out and confirmed that the pure culture as well as the mixed culture consortium of the bacterial strains has the ability to reduce the organic pollutants in GTL process water. However, the growth rate and biodegradation efficiency depend on the type of strains and the initial COD content. Indeed, the removal percentage and growth rate were enhanced after 7 days for all cultures and resulted in COD reduction up to 60%. Moreover, the mixed culture of bacterial strains can tolerate and treat GTL process water with a variety of ranges of COD contents., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2021 Surkatti, Al Disi, El-Naas, Zouari, Van Loosdrecht and Onwusogh.)

The Khor Al-Adaid sabkha in Qatar is among the rare extreme environments on Earth where it is possible to study the formation of dolomite-a carbonate mineral whose origin remains unclear and has been hypothetically linked to microbial activity. By combining geochemical measurements with microbiological analysis, we have investigated the microbial mats colonizing the intertidal areas of sabhka. The main aim of this study was to identify communities and conditions that are favorable for dolomite formation. We inspected and sampled two locations. The first site was colonized by microbial mats that graded vertically from photo-oxic to anoxic conditions and were dominated by cyanobacteria. The second site, with higher salinity, had mats with an uppermost photo-oxic layer dominated by filamentous anoxygenic photosynthetic bacteria (FAPB), which potentially act as a protective layer against salinity for cyanobacterial species within the deeper layers. Porewater in the uppermost layers of the both investigated microbial mats was supersaturated with respect to dolomite. Corresponding to the variation of the microbial community's vertical structure, a difference in crystallinity and morphology of dolomitic phases was observed: dumbbell-shaped proto-dolomite in the mats dominated by cyanobacteria and rhombohedral ordered-dolomite in the mat dominated by FAPB.