Rapid, stable, and highly-efficient development of salt-tolerant aerobic granular sludge by inoculating magnetite-assisted mycelial pellets

Xushen Han; Rui Tang; Changshen Liu; Jingxue Yue; Yan Jin; Jianguo Yu

doi:10.1016/j.chemosphere.2023.139645

Rapid, stable, and highly-efficient development of salt-tolerant aerobic granular sludge by inoculating magnetite-assisted mycelial pellets

Chemosphere. 2023 Oct:339:139645. doi: 10.1016/j.chemosphere.2023.139645. Epub 2023 Jul 24.

Authors

Xushen Han¹, Rui Tang², Changshen Liu², Jingxue Yue², Yan Jin³, Jianguo Yu⁴

Affiliations

¹ State Environmental Protection Key Laboratory of Environmental Risk Assessment and Control on Chemical Process, East China University of Science and Technology, 130 Meilong Road, Shanghai, 200237, China; National Engineering Research Center for Integrated Utilization of Salt Lake Resources, East China University of Science and Technology, 130 Meilong Road, Shanghai, 200237, China. Electronic address: xushen.han@ecust.edu.cn.
² State Environmental Protection Key Laboratory of Environmental Risk Assessment and Control on Chemical Process, East China University of Science and Technology, 130 Meilong Road, Shanghai, 200237, China; National Engineering Research Center for Integrated Utilization of Salt Lake Resources, East China University of Science and Technology, 130 Meilong Road, Shanghai, 200237, China.
³ National Engineering Research Center for Integrated Utilization of Salt Lake Resources, East China University of Science and Technology, 130 Meilong Road, Shanghai, 200237, China.
⁴ State Environmental Protection Key Laboratory of Environmental Risk Assessment and Control on Chemical Process, East China University of Science and Technology, 130 Meilong Road, Shanghai, 200237, China; National Engineering Research Center for Integrated Utilization of Salt Lake Resources, East China University of Science and Technology, 130 Meilong Road, Shanghai, 200237, China. Electronic address: jgyu@ecust.edu.cn.

PMID: 37495046
DOI: 10.1016/j.chemosphere.2023.139645

Abstract

Long cultivation time hinders the industrial applications of aerobic granular sludge (AGS) in treatment of hypersaline wastewater. Mycelial pellets (MPs) have been used to efficiently strengthen the flocculent sludge aggregation and accelerate the formation of AGS. However, the MPs-based AGS was easily crushed or fragmented into several small pieces/granules that brought the uncertainty and extended the transition process to form mature AGS. In this study, magnetite was used to strengthen MPs (halotolerant fungus Cladosporium tenuissimum NCSL-XY8), and co-culture and adsorption type of magnetite-assisted mycelial pellets (CMMPs and AMMPs) were prepared and used for acceleration of salt-tolerant aerobic granular sludge (SAGS) cultivation under 3% salinity conditions. Compared to inoculating MPs, the inoculation of either CMMPs or AMMPs could stably transition to mature SAGS without evident fragmentation, which obviously increased the certainty and stability of SAGS formation. Also, highly-efficient simultaneous nitrogen and carbon removal (∼98% TOC and ∼80% TN removal) could be reached in 8 days. Typically, the granules maintained perfect characteristics (D₅₀ > 1300 μm, D₁₀ > 350 μm, SVI₃₀ < 45 mL/g, and SVI₃₀/SVI₅ = 1.0) during the whole cultivation/transition processes (Day 0-55) by using the inoculum of CMMPs. ITS rDNA sequencing revealed the inoculated fungus Cladosporium tenuissimum played key roles in the formation of SAGS. All the phenomena indicated the rapid, stable, and highly-efficient start-up of SAGS could be successfully realized by inoculating CMMPs.

Keywords: Aerobic granular sludge; Bioaugmentation; Hypersaline wastewater; Magnetite; Mycelial pellets; Rapid granulation.

MeSH terms

Aerobiosis
Bioreactors / microbiology
Ferrosoferric Oxide*
Nitrogen
Sewage* / microbiology
Waste Disposal, Fluid

Substances

Sewage
Ferrosoferric Oxide
Nitrogen

Supplementary concepts

Cladosporium tenuissimum