Abstract
Biogranulation has emerged as a viable alternative biological wastewater treatment approach because of its strong biodegradability potential, toxicity tolerance, and biomass retention features. However, this process requires a long duration for biogranules formation to occur. In this study, magnetic powder activated carbon (MPAC) was used as support material in a sequencing batch reactor to enhance biogranules development for wastewater treatment. Two parallel SBRs (designated R1 and R2) were used, with R1 serving as a control without the presence of MPAC while R2 was operated with MPAC. The biodegradability capacity and biomass properties of MPAC biogranules were compared with a control system. The measured diameter of biogranules for R1 and R2 after 8 weeks of maturation were 2.2 mm and 3.4 mm, respectively. The integrity coefficient of the biogranules in R2 was higher (8.3%) than that of R1 (13.4%), indicating that the addition of MPAC improved the structure of the biogranules in R2. The components of extracellular polymeric substances were also higher in R2 than in R1. Scanning electronic microscopy was able to examine the morphological structures of the biogranules which showed there were irregular formations compacted together. However, there were more cavities situated in R1 biogranules (without MPAC) when compared to R2 biogranules (with MPAC). Dye removal reached 65% and 83% in R1 and R2 in the post-development stage. This study demonstrates that the addition of MPAC could shorten and improve biogranules formation. MPAC acted as the support media for microbial growth during the biogranulation developmental process.
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Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Technology, and Innovation (MOSTI) and the Ministry of Higher Education (MOHE) for the research grants provided to support this study (Grant No. 03H91 and 4F512).
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This study was supported by Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (Grant Nos. 03H9 and 03H9) and Ministry of Higher Education, Malaysia (Grant No.4F512).
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AHO: drafted the manuscript, conducted the experiments, software analysis, and prepared figures; KM: conceptualization, acquisition of funding and project supervision; AIO, ZAM, NSBA, and FMP: Wrote the main and revised manuscript, software analysis, prepared figures, and data validation.
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Omar, A.H., Muda, K., Omoregie, A.I. et al. Enhancement of biogranules development using magnetized powder activated carbon. Biodegradation 34, 235–252 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10532-023-10016-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10532-023-10016-7