A new way to cultivate aerobic granules in the process of papermaking wastewater treatment

A new way to cultivate aerobic granules using papermaking wastewater was presented in this paper. By seeding superior mixed flora (SMF) to sequencing batch reactor (SBR), aerobic granules appeared on day 19. The formation process was studied by microscopes. The results showed that granulation process consisted of five stages, i.e. microbe multiplication phase, floc appearance phase, floc cohesion phase, mature floc phase and aerobic granule phase; SMF was the key reason that aerobic granules could shape and filamentous microbes played a crucial role in granulation process. Furthermore, some factors affecting granule formation were discussed.