Microbial Addition Technology for Enhanced Biological Wastewater Treatment

为什么它很重要？家庭和工业废水造成了大量污染，特别是在淡水系统内。众所周知，这些废水中的许多对周围环境具有高度毒性，因此有必要创造一种具有成本效益的方法来科普这些废水中发现的复杂化合物。生物强化是这样一种方法，其涉及添加针对其特定特性而专门选择的微生物，目的是增强目标污染物的去除（Raper等人，2018）。通过添加辅助微生物，该工艺能够提高某些废水处理系统的性能。该技术还具有降低污水处理厂（集中式和分散式）资本成本的潜力。特别是，这可以使低收入和中等收入国家安装分散式工厂的成本更容易负担，以改善当地的卫生条件。目前的生物强化研究主要集中在实验室规模的研究与人工合成废水，而不是直接在大规模的污水处理系统的过程性能。该项目将如何进行？该研究最初将涉及以实验室为基础的实验，调查微生物的生长（特别是使用呼吸计）和与废水处理相关的好氧和厌氧生物过程中的存活。在项目的后期阶段，我们将集中精力在一个全面的污水处理厂中实施“蛇油”生物强化产品，以测试其对最终产品的影响。将使用侧流反应器进行细菌生长，以使接种的微生物完全适应其环境。这将产生什么影响？为了实现净零碳目标，降低WWTS的资本和运营成本，有效快速地去除某些污染物，最终达到WWTS更好的出水合规性。

Why is it important?Domestic and industrial wastewater has contributed to a large amount of pollution, particularly within freshwater systems. It is known that many of these wastewaters are highly toxic to the surrounding environment and therefore it is necessary to create a cost-effective method of trying to cope with the complex compounds found within these wastewaters.Bioaugmentation is such a method that involves the addition of microorganisms that are selected specifically for their specialized characteristics, with the aim of enhancing removal of target pollutants (Raper et al, 2018). With the addition of supplementary micro-organisms, the process has the capabilities of improving performance within certain wastewater treatment systems. The technology also has the potential to reduce the capital cost of wastewater treatment plants, both centralised and decentralised. In particular, this could make the cost of decentralised plants installed in low- and middle-income countries more affordable to improve sanitation in local areas.What don't we know?Current bioaugmentation studies have mainly focussed on laboratory-scaled research with synthetic wastewater, rather than the process performance directly in large-scale wastewater treatment system.How will the project be carried out?The research will initially involve laboratory-based experiments investigating microbial growth (particularly using a respirometer) and survival in aerobic and anaerobic bioprocesses relevant to wastewater treatment. In the latter stages of the project, we will focus on implementing a "snake oil" bioaugmentation product into a full-scale WWTP, to test the effect it has on the final product. A side-stream reactor will be used for bacterial growth as to allow the inoculated microorganisms to become fully acclimatised to its environment.What will be the impact?To meet net zero carbon targets, reduce capital and operating costs of WWTS, removal of certain contaminants effectively and quickly and finally meet better effluent compliance in WWTS's.