Bioaugmentation of Mixed Microbial Consortiu to Campus Sewage Treatment

Abstract

The activated sludge was cultivated by adding a mixed microbial consortium into sequencing batch reactors to treat campus sewage. The system start-up and the operation effect were studied to investigate the bioaugmentation of the mixed microbial consortium. The results showed that after the mixed microbial consortium being added into the activated sludge, the experimental group with the new advanced activated sludge could start up very soon compared with the control group with ordinary activated sludge. Under some experimental conditions, the chemical oxygen demand (COD) removal, the sludge volume index (SVI) and sludge flocculating ability (SFA) of the experimental group reached 67%, 70 mL/g and 55.5%, respectively, which were superior to those of the control group. The experiment group could reach the best COD removal on campus sewage in 23 days, which was shorter than the control group. The activity duration of the mixed microbial consortium on the activated sludge was 30 days. All the results indicated that the mixed microbial consortium could accelerate the start-up of the activated sludge system and increase the operation effect, which meant the mixed microbial consortium, a new conditioner, had bioaugmentation on the activated sludge to campus sewage treatment.