Synergistic enhancement of real coal chemical wastewater treatment by aerobic granular sludge, iron-carbon microelectrolysis, and co-substrate regulation.

In staged sequencing batch reactors treating real coal chemical wastewater, the combined aerobic granular sludge, iron-carbon microelectrolysis, and co-substrate regulation achieved 83.1% COD removal.

• Why it matters: Coal chemical wastewater can destabilize sludge structure and cause biological treatment performance fluctuations, creating a need for strategies that stabilize the granular microenvironment under toxic stress and substrate limitation.
• What they did: Two staged reactors compared aerobic granular sludge alone versus co-substrate addition, iron-carbon microelectrolysis conditioning, or both, tracking pollutant removal, sludge properties, enzyme activities, and microbial community shifts.
• The result: With the synergistic system, COD, TOC, and TN removal reached 83.1%, 76.5%, and 66.9%, while oxidative metabolism and aromatic ring cleavage were supported by dehydrogenase activity (8.68 μg TF/(mL·h)) and catechol dioxygenases.

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