Measuring the activities of higher organisms in activated sludge by means of mechanical shearing pretreatment and oxygen uptake rate

A pretreatment method was developed to assess the activities of higher organisms. The method is based on mechanical shearing to damage the large cells of the protozoan and metazoan community in activated sludge. The procedure was confirmed through experimentation to be effective in determining the activities of higher organisms by comparing oxygen uptake rates (OURs) before and after the higher organisms were eradicated. Shearing led to disintegration of flocs, which could be effectively reconstituted by centrifugation. The reconstitution of the sludge flocs was essential since otherwise the activity of the floc mass would be too high due to lack of diffusion limitation. Mechanical shearing had no influence on the morphology, quantity and specific activity of yeasts, and it was inferred that bacteria smaller than yeasts in size would also not be influenced by the applied shearing procedure. Moreover, the effect of filamentous organisms on the measured activities of higher organisms was experimentally demonstrated and analyzed, and determined to be so weak that it could be ignored. Based on these tests, five typical activated sludge processes were selected to measure the contribution of higher organisms to the original OUR. The measured activities of higher organisms ranged from 9.4 to 25.0% of the original OURs.