Enhancement of biological fermented sludge dewaterability by inoculation of filamentous fungi Mucor circinelloides XY-Z and Penicillium oxalicum LY-1

Abstract

The two filamentous fungi of Mucor circinelloides XY-Z and Penicillium oxalicum LY-1 isolated from citric acid wastewater sludge collectively enhanced sludge dewaterability by 85.83% to achieve the lowest value of normalized sludge specific resistance (SRF) to 6.8 × 10¹¹ m·L/kg·g-TSS. The results showed that 75.77% of slime extracellular polymeric substances (EPS), 42.99% of protein in slime EPS and 60.27% of polysaccharide in LB-EPS were degraded during activated sludge treatment by the two mixed fungi of Mucor circinelloides XY-Z and Penicillium oxalicum LY-1, contributing to the conversion of 64.61% of bound water wrapped in EPS into free water, thereby improving activated sludge dewaterability.

Keywords:

• Activated sludge dewaterability
• mixed filamentous fungal inoculation
• extracellular polymeric substances bound water

Acknowledgments

We would also like to thank Dr. Ning Ding for polishing the manuscript. Additionally, we thank Liwen Bianji, Edanz Group China (www.liwenbianji.cn/ac), for editing the English text of a draft of this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was financially supported by the National Water Pollution Control and Management Projects under grant 2017ZX07301-004.