A powerful strategy to improve aerobic granular sludge stability towards organic shock loadings with varying carbon/nitrogen ratios: Weak magnetic field

The organic shock loadings with varying ratios of carbon to nitrogen (C/N) caused by fluctuations of wastewater flowrate and concentration inflict a great threat on the stability of aerobic granular sludge (AGS) in practical applications. Herein, the present work proposed an enhanced shock-loading-tolerance strategy for AGS by applying a weak magnetic field (WMF). Results indicated that aerobic granules exposed in WMF kept a significant propagation regardless of the various influent organic concentrations, while those in the control reactor exhibited inadaptability with decreasing biomass concentration and bioactivity at lean substrate conditions. The enhanced extracellular polymeric substances regulating process might be one of the inducement mechanisms to cope with organic shock loadings of WMF. In addition, the AGS system in WMF showed its strong resilience in terms of the ammonia and phosphate removal. Magnetic field could inhibit the overgrowth of filamentous bacteria, and the enhanced tolerance for organic shock loadings might attribute to the enrichment of functional microbes related to structural stability such as Firmicutes and Candidatus_Competibacter. Therefore, this work revealed the enhanced mechanisms of magnetic field for improving the AGS stability towards organic shock loadings, promoting the full-scale engineering applications of both AGS and magnetization technologies in wastewater treatment.