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Formation of soluble microbial products (SMP) by activated sludge at various salinities

Biodegradation volume 24, pages 69–78 (2013)Cite this article

Abstract

Soluble microbial products (SMP) present a significant component of effluent organic matter from biological wastewater treatment reactors, and can affect the membrane fouling and formation of disinfection by-products. Thus, SMP have attracted increasing concerns in wastewater treatment and reclamation. In this work, the formation of SMP by activated sludge at various NaCl concentrations is investigated by using fluorescence excitation–emission matrix (EEM) spectroscopy with parallel factor analysis (PARAFAC) and fluorescence regional integration (FRI). The results show that a high level of salinity decreases substrate removal efficiency and leads to an accumulation of SMP, especially proteins. Three components of SMP, one protein-like and two humic-acid-like components, are identified by PARAFAC, which exhibit different trends with the variation of NaCl concentration. FRI analysis reveals that the majority of protein fluorescence is attributed to tryptophan and tryptophan-like proteins, rather than tyrosine and tyrosine-like proteins. With an increase in NaCl concentration, the normalized volume percentages of tyrosine and tryptophan region increase, while those of humic- and fulvic-acid-like region decrease significantly. This work demonstrates that salinity affects the formation of SMP, and that EEM with PARAFAC in combination with FRI analysis is a useful tool to get insight into the formation of SMP by activated sludge.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to gratefully thank the support from the National Natural Science Foundation (51178215 and 50825802) and Jiansu Provincial Natural Science Foundation (BK2011032), China.

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Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Pollution Control and Resources Reuse, School of the Environment, Nanjing University, Nanjing, 210046, China

    Yan Li & Ai-Min Li

  2. Department of Chemistry, University of Science & Technology of China, Hefei, 230026, China

    Juan Xu, Wen-Wei Li & Han-Qing Yu

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  1. Yan Li
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  2. Ai-Min Li
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  3. Juan Xu
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  4. Wen-Wei Li
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  5. Han-Qing Yu
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Correspondence to Ai-Min Li.

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Li, Y., Li, AM., Xu, J. et al. Formation of soluble microbial products (SMP) by activated sludge at various salinities. Biodegradation 24, 69–78 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10532-012-9558-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10532-012-9558-5

Keywords

  • Fluorescence excitation−emission matrix
  • Parallel factor analysis
  • Fluorescence regional integration
  • Salinity
  • Soluble microbial products