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When aerobic granular sludge faces emerging contaminants: A review
Summary
This review examines how aerobic granular sludge technology performs when confronted with emerging contaminants including persistent organic pollutants, endocrine disruptors, antibiotics, and microplastics in wastewater treatment. The study highlights that aerobic granular sludge shows strong application potential through biodegradation and adsorption mechanisms, with extracellular polymeric substances playing a critical role in both sludge stability and contaminant removal.
The evolution of emerging contaminants (ECs) has caused greater requirements and challenges to the current biological wastewater treatment technology. As one of the most promising biological treatment technologies, the aerobic granular sludge (AGS) process also faces the challenge of ECs. This study summarizes the recent progress and characteristics of several representative ECs (persistent organic pollutants, endocrine disrupting chemicals, antibiotics, and microplastics) in AGS systems that have garnered widespread attention. Additionally, the biodegradation and adsorption mechanisms of ECs were discussed, and the interactions between various ECs and AGS was elucidated. The importance of extracellular polymeric substances for the stabilization of AGS and the removal of ECs is also discussed. Knowledge gaps and future research directions that may enable the practical application of AGS are highlighted. Overall, AGS processes show great application potential and this review provides guidance for the future implementation of AGS technology as well as elucidating the mechanism of its interaction with ECs.
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