Rapid aerobic granulation in an SBR treating piggery wastewater by seeding sludge from a municipal WWTP

Aerobic sludge granulation was rapidly obtained in the erlenmeyer bottle and sequencing batch reactor (SBR) using piggery wastewater. Aerobic granulation occurred on day 3 and granules with mean diameter of 0.2 mmand SVI30 of 20.3 mL/g formed in SBR on day 18. High concentrations of Ca and Fe in the raw piggery wastewater and operating mode accelerated aerobic granulation, even though the seed sludgewas fromamunicipal wastewater treatment plant (WWTP). Alpha diversity analysis revealed Operational Taxonomic Units, Shannon, ACE and Chao 1 indexes in aerobic granules were 2013, 5.51, 4665.5 and 3734.5, which were obviously lower compared to seed sludge. The percentages of major microbial communities, such as Proteobacteria, Bacteroidetes and Firmicutes were obviously higher in aerobic granules than seed sludge. Chloroflexi, Planctomycetes, Actinobacteria, TM7 and Acidobacteria showedmuch higher abundances in the inoculum. The main reasons might be the characteristics of raw piggery wastewater and granule structure. (C) 2016 The Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Published by Elsevier B.V.