In treatment of sewage one process used is the

activated sludge The activated sludge process is a type of biological wastewater treatment process for treating sewage or Industrial wastewater treatment, industrial wastewaters using aeration and a biological floc (biofilm), floc composed of bacteria and protozoa ...

process in which air is passed through a mixture of sewage and old sludge to allow the micro-organisms to break down the organic components of the sewage. Sludge is continually drawn off as new sewage enters the tank and this sludge must then be settled so that the supernatant (the remaining liquid) can be separated to pass on to further stages of treatment. Sludge bulking occurs when the sludge fails to separate out in the sedimentation tanks. The main cause of sludge bulking is the growth of filamentous

bacteria Bacteria (; : bacterium) are ubiquitous, mostly free-living organisms often consisting of one Cell (biology), biological cell. They constitute a large domain (biology), domain of Prokaryote, prokaryotic microorganisms. Typically a few micr ...

. Filamentous

microorganism A microorganism, or microbe, is an organism of microscopic scale, microscopic size, which may exist in its unicellular organism, single-celled form or as a Colony (biology)#Microbial colonies, colony of cells. The possible existence of unseen ...

s grow in long strands that have much greater volume and surface area than conventional floc and are very slow to settle. Under certain growing conditions, filamentous organisms predominate. There is little robust scientific evidence that can be used to avoid sludge bulking but what there is indicates that over-loading works, having a carbohydrate rich input and having too low a recycle rate may all contribute. To avoid sludge bulking some of the flow that enters the reactor can be bypassed, recycle ratio can be increased, lime or soda can be added to the reactor or the re-aeration rate increased.

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