The novel system of EBA (based on external circulation anaerobic (EC) process-biological enhanced (BE) process-anoxic/oxic (A/O) process) was applied to treat the British Gas/Lurgi coal gasification wastewater in Erdos, China. After a long time of commissioning, the EBA system represented a stable and highly efficient performance, particularly, the concentrations of COD, NH4+-N, total organic carbon, total nitrogen and volatile phenols in the final effluent reached 53, 0.3, 18, 106 mg/L and not detected, respectively. Both the GC-MS and fluorescence excitation-emission matrix analyses revealed significant variations of organic compositions in the effluent of different process. The results of high-throughput sequencing represented the EBA system composed 34 main bacteria which were affiliated to 7 phyla. In addition, the canonical correspondence analysis indicated high coherence among community composition, wastewater characteristics and environmental variables, in which the pH, mixed liquid suspended solids and total phenols loading were the most three significant variables. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.