Physiological heterogeneity in biofilms and granules used in wastewater treatment

Abstract

Biofilms and granules have been studied in the treatment of wastewater. This project has carried out various experiments and analysed the relationships between the properties of cells like their membrane potential, respiration activity and viability using luminescence spectrometer. CTC was used to determined the respiration activity of cells while DiBAC4(3), which penetrates into dead cells, and DiOC2(3), which penetrates into live cells, were used as indicator for the membrane potential. Samples used for this experiment include pure culture of Escherichia coli, aerobic sludge obtained from the Environmental Lab in Nanyang Technological University (NTU) and granules from a two weeks reactor of species Pseudomonas veronii and from an irregular-shaped rectangular column of unknown species.