Журнал аналитических и биоаналитических методов

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Analysis of Soluble Microbial Products by Mass Spectrometry: Potential in Monitoring Bioprocesses of Wastewater Treatment

Huixing Feng, Yan Zhou, Guili Zhao, Jaslyn Lee, Chenghong Guo, Wun Jern Ng and Wei Ning Chen

In biological wastewater treatment process, the analysis of metabolic compounds that are produced during the process is critical to monitor the performance of microorganisms. The soluble products present in the effluent directly affect the process efficiency and quality of the water after treatment, and it is also the major reason for fouling in membrane bioreactor. Currently, analytical methods are mainly restricted to the overall measurement of the total amount of polysaccharides, DNA and proteins without any specific identification of these compounds. Here we introduce an explorative mass spectrometry based strategy, for the analysis of soluble microbial products and other soluble impurities in the effluents of wastewater treatments using different digestion process. According to the results from this study, the two stage co digestion process indicated higher treatment efficiency compared with the single stage process, since fewer compounds were detected in the effluent. For the two-stage process, most of the fatty acids produced in the first stage of digestion by hydrolysis and acidogenesis, were digested in the second stage. The results also indicated that the digestion efficiency of the single stage process was lower than that of the separated two-stage process. This study is one of few exploration of analyzing and identifying unknown compounds using MS based technique from a metabolic analysis perspective. Our novel approach can be applied as an analytical platform to effectively monitor the biological processes and provides a different view point in wastewater treatment systems.