A laboratory study was conducted to investigate the production of quorum sensing (QS) molecules by aerobic granules in membrane-partitioned bioreactor. Flow-chamber (FC) tests with Escherichia coli K12 demonstrated that granules induced more attached growth of E. coli cells than activated sludge flocs, leading to more cell adhesion and biofilm formation on the FC cover slide. Using the thin-lay...

Permanent magnets with non-uniform magnetic field and an electromagnet with 3–5 mT uniform magnetic field were applied to investigate their effects on both aerobic granulation and COD and ammonium removal in reactors with less than 7% coverage of magnetic field. It was found that both types of magnets had little influence on the granulation speed and the settling ability of granular sludge at t...

To characterize the effects of pentachlorophenol (PCP) on the performance and microbial community of aerobic granular sludge in sequencing batch reactor (SBR), the web-based terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism (T-RFLP) and real-time PCR (RT-PCR) techniques were used to explore the bacterial community structure. When PCP increased from 0 to 50 mg/L, the COD removal rate changed lit...

This experimental work investigated the property of membrane fouling for different sludges at high flux 20 L/(m(2)h). The MBR with good aerobic granular sludge performed the longest operation time 61 days, and TMP rose up in a steady overall rate, while only 10, 14 and 19 days for bulking, flocculent and small granular sludge, respectively, which clearly demonstrated the good and complete aerob...

The influence of sludge age on granular sludge formation and microbial population dynamics in a methanol- and acetate-fed aerobic granular sludge system operated at 35°C was investigated. During anaerobic feeding of the reactor, methanol was initially converted to methane by methylotrophic methanogens. These methanogens were able to withstand the relatively long aeration periods. Lowering the a...

The granulation of anammox sludge plays an important role in the high nitrogen removal performance of the anammox reactor. In this study, anaerobic granular sludge was selected as the seeding sludge to start up anammox reactor in order to directly obtain anammox granules. Results showed that the anammox UASB reactor was successfully started up by inoculating anaerobic granular sludge, with subs...

Due to unspecified operational problems, the specific acetoclastic activity (SAA) of the anaerobic granular sludge present in an industrial UASB reactor was considerably damaged (from 250 to less than 10mL CH(4)@STP/gVSS.d), significantly reducing the biogas production of that industrial unit. The hydrogenotrophic methanogenic activity exhibited a value of 600mL CH4@STP/gVSS.d, the settling vel...

In recent years, lots of the extracellular polymeric substances (EPS) related researches have focused on its role in the granulation and structural stability of aerobic sludge. Three-dimensional fluorescence spectrum (3D-EEM) and fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) technologies were used to analyse the main components of sludge EPS during aerobic sludge granulation in this study. Res...

In recent years, a significant part of research on wastewater treatment has focussed on development of compact systems. Wastewater treatment plants (WWTP) can be designed compact when biomass is maintained in the system without the use of conventional settling tanks as in flocculated activated sludge systems. Examples are developments in the field of Membrane BioReactors, Biological Aerated Fil...

The bacteriological composition and ultrastructure of mesophilic granular methanogenic sludge from a large-scale Upflow Anaerobic Sludge Blanket reactor treating wastewater from a sugar plant and of sludge granules adapted to ethanol and propionate were studied by counting different bacterial groups and by immunocytochemical methods. Propionate-grown granular sludge consisted of two types of cl...