Characteristics and Symbiotic Relationships between Carbon Fines and Attached Bacteria in GAC Treatment Effluents

In this paper, the characteristics, size distribution and influencing factors of carbon fines and symbiotic relationships between attached bacteria and fines were detected and analyzed under traditional process conditions. The STXM measurement could be used to judge carbon fines. The number of fines in the GAC effluents during the filtration cycle contented a trend of rise first then fall. And the maximum height of most carbon fines was around 0.45-10 ¿m. By comparison of three influencing factors, we investigated that the inlet particles had almost no effect on the outlet fines, and longer EBCT and the style of low backwashing intensity and long backwashing time could decrease the number of fines to a much greater extent. Attached consortia were suitable model systems for the investigation of the molecular mechanisms of cell-cell recognition and signal exchange between different types of carbon fines.