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Bacterial community in the biofilm of granular activated carbon (GAC) PreBiofilter in bench-scale pilot plants for surface water pretreatment

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Abstract

Biofilters of granular activated carbon (GAC) are responsible for the removal of organic matters in drinking water treatments. PreBiofilters, which operate as the first unit in a surface water treatment train, are a cost-effective pretreatment for conventional surface water treatment and provide more consistent downstream water quality. This study investigated bacterial communities from the samples of raw surface water, biofilm on the PreBiofilter, and filtrates for surface water pretreatment. A bench-scale pilot plant of PreBiofilter was constructed to pretreat surface water from the Canoochee River, GA, USA. PreBiofilter exhibited a significant reduction of total organic carbon and dissolved organic carbon. The evenness and Shannon diversity of bacterial operational taxonomic units (OTUs) were significantly higher on the biofilm of PreBiofilter than in raw water and filtrates. Similar bacteria communities were observed in the raw water and filtrates using relative abundance of bacterial OTUs. However, the bacterial communities in the filtrates became relatively similar to those in the biofilm using presence/absence of bacterial OTUs. GAC biofilm or raw water and filtrates greatly contributed to the abundance of bacteria; whereas, bacteria sheared from colonized biofilm and entered filtrates. Evenly distributed, diverse and unique bacteria in the biofilm played an important role to remove organic matters from surface water for conventional surface water pretreatment.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by the Interdisciplinary Research Pilot Program of the former College of Science and Technology (COST) at Georgia Southern University to George Fu (PI) and Tiehang Wu (Co-PI). Thanks to Dr. Scott Harrison for assistance in using ABI 3500.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biology, Georgia Southern University, Statesboro, GA, 30460, USA

    Tiehang Wu & Michael Sabula

  2. Department of Civil Engineering and Construction Management, Georgia Southern University, Statesboro, GA, 30460, USA

    George Yuzhu Fu & Tommy Brown

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  1. Tiehang Wu
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  2. George Yuzhu Fu
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  3. Michael Sabula
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  4. Tommy Brown
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Correspondence to Tiehang Wu.

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Wu, T., Fu, G.Y., Sabula, M. et al. Bacterial community in the biofilm of granular activated carbon (GAC) PreBiofilter in bench-scale pilot plants for surface water pretreatment. World J Microbiol Biotechnol 30, 3251–3262 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11274-014-1752-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11274-014-1752-7

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