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Updated: Jul 19, 2026

A Novel Bioreactor for High Density Cultivation of Diverse Microbial Communities
Published on: December 25, 2015
Effects of stratified microbial extracellular polymeric substances on microalgae dominant biofilm formation and
Jing-Tian Zhang1, Jian-Xia Wang1, Yang Liu1
1MOE Key Laboratory of Bio-Intelligent Manufacturing, School of Bioengineering, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian 116024 PR China.
Abstract:
Extracellular polymeric substances (EPS) are well-acknowledged to accelerate microalgal biofilm formation, yet specific role of stratified EPS is unknown. Bacterial biofilm stratified EPS could enrich phosphorus, whether microalgal biofilm stratified EPS could also realize phosphorus or nitrogen enrichment remains unclarified. This study investigated microalgae dominant biofilm growth characteristics and nutrients removal via inoculating microalgae and stratified bacterial EPS at various microalgae:bacteria ratios. Soluble-EPS favored biofilm establishment and chlorophyll synthesis, while loosely-bound (LB-EPS) and tightly-bound EPS (TB-EPS) improved phosphorus removal, and optimum microalgae:bacteria cell count ratio was 1:0.5. Under semi-continuous operation, stable and efficient nutrients removal was observed at hydraulic retention time (HRT) of 2 days. Both nitrogen and phosphorus enrichment by TB-EPS over LB-EPS (respectively up to 7.9 and 23.8 times) were innovatively discovered, with enhanced nutrients turnover efficiency at higher HRTs. This study provided direct evidences regarding the role of stratified EPS on microalgal biofilm development and nutrients turnover.
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