The microbial ecology of industrial activated sludge plants – linking microbial data (e.g. filamentous organisms) to external factors

This projected is situated in the field of biological wastewater treatment and more specifically deals with the activated sludge (AS) process. Filamentous bulking due to the overgrowth of filamentous organisms has been generally reported as one of the most significant downsides of the AS process. In order to provide solutions for (waste)water practitioners, it is crucial to determine the type of these filamentous organisms and link their dominance to external factors. In this project we aim to use next generation sequencing (16s rRNA amplicon sequencing) to analyze the microbial community and more specifically the presence of filamentous organisms of 30 industrial wastewater treatment plants, relevant for the region of Flanders. Subsequently we aim to link the obtained microbial data to external factors such as wastewater, biomass characteristics and the operational parameters of the treatment plant.

Keywords:SPECIES DIVERSITY, BIOMONITORING, WASTEWATER TREATMENT, SLUDGE SYSTEMS

Disciplines:Analysis of next-generation sequence data, (Waste)water treatment processes, Environmental microorganism biotechnology, Environmental technologies