Structural and fractal characteristics of biofilm attached on the surfaces of aquatic plants and gravels in the rivers and lakes reusing reclaimed wastewater

Abstract

Reusing reclaimed wastewater from lakes has become one of the most effective measures to relieve the urban ecological crisis. However, reclaimed wastewater still contains large amounts of nutrient salts, trace organic pollutants, suspended solid particles and microorganisms, which may significantly affect the aquatic ecosystems. The health of aquatic ecosystems can be directly and effectively monitored by evaluating the biofilms in them, because the structures of biofilms are directly affected by multiple environmental factors. Therefore, it is important to study the structures of biofilms attached on multiple medium surfaces in river-lake systems that contain reclaimed wastewater. In this study, the paper applied scanning electron microscope (SEM) technology and fractal theory to quantitatively describe the structural characteristics of biofilms attached on the medium surfaces of aquatic plants and gravels in the Lianshi Lake of Beijing Yongding River and other two kinds of reclaimed water of the river-lakes, whose sewage treatment processes were the combined process of deposit and sand filtration and UF membrane filtration, plus anaerobic-anoxic-oxic process, respectively. The paper found that these two types of biofilms were typical porous media and their basic skeletons were mainly composed of inorganic particles, microorganisms, and algae. Furthermore, most areas between the particles were filled with extracellular polymers (EPS) secreted by bacteria. At the same time, these biofilms showed obvious fractal and multifractal characteristics, but the fractal dimensions alone failed to effectively describe the complexity of biofilm structures. The multifractal spectra were able to quantitatively characterize the biofilms’ heterogeneity. In addition, the number of microorganism species, the quantity and the heterogeneity of aquatic plants’ surface biofilms were all higher than those of gravel surface biofilms, most likely due to the effects of light. In addition, the heterogeneity of biofilms in reclaimed water treated by the combined process of deposit and sand filtration and UF membrane filtration plus anaerobic-anoxic-oxic process was higher than that of biofilms in reclaimed water treated by traditionally activated sludge process (Lianshi Lake’s water). Besides, the non-uniformity of biofilms in reclaimed water treated by combined process of deposit and sand filtration was higher than that of biofilms in reclaimed water treated by UF membrane filtration plus anaerobic-anoxic-oxic process.