Granule size informs the characteristics and performance of microalgal-bacterial granular sludge for wastewater treatment

• Main Authors: Zhang, Meng, Ji, Bin, Wang, Shulian, Gu, Jun, Liu, Yu
• Other Authors: School of Civil and Environmental Engineering
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: 2022
• Subjects: Engineering::Environmental engineering; Granule Size; Process Performance
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/162097
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

In this study, four groups of microalgal-bacterial granules with averaged diameters of about 356, 760, 951 and 1,444 µm were used to investigate their characteristics and performance in treating wastewater. A strong correlation between extracellular polymeric substances of microalgal-bacterial granules and the granule size was observed. Moreover, granule size showed a positive effect on the specific organics removal rate, but being negative for ammonium and phosphorus removal. It appeared that granule size could be used as a useful index to reflect the synergistic interactions between microalgae and bacteria in terms of the abundances, distributions and functional species in the microalgal-bacterial granules. This study is expected to offer new insights into the size-dependent performances of microalgal-bacterial granules for wastewater treatment.