Bioaerosolization behavior along sewage sludge biostabilization

Highlights

• Aerosolization behavior during a lab-scale sludge biostabilization was determined.

• Many pathogenic species were identified to be preferentially aerosolized.

• Bioaerosol concentration along the biostabilization ranged from 160 to 1440 cell/m³.

• Sludge aerosolization behavior was different with that of other biowaste.

Abstract

Biostabilization is a cost-effective method for the beneficial utilization of sewage sludge. However, during the operation of sludge biostabilization, some microbial species could be released into the atmospheric environment from the solid-phase of sludge easily and present a high risk to human health. This study aimed to evaluate the risk of bioaerosol during sludge biostabilization. We found a total of nine bacterial phyla, one archaeal phylum, and two fungal phyla in the bioaerosol samples. Among them, Proteobacteria, Actinobacteria, Bacteroidetes, and Ascomycota were the dominant phyla. In addition, the bioaerosolization indexes (BI) of prokaryotic phyla and fungal phyla ranged 0–45 and 0–487, respectively. Massilia, Pseudarthrobacter, Pseudomonas, Tremellales spp., and Fusarium were the preferentially aerosolized microbial genera with maximum bioaerosolization indexes of 19962, 10360, 1802, 3055, and 7398. The bioaerosol concentration during the biostabilization ranged from 160 to 1440 cell/m³, and we identified species such as Stenotrophomonas rhizophila and Fusarium graminerum with high bioaerosolization indexes that could be threats to human health. Euryachaeota, which belongs to archaeal phyla, had the highest biostabilization index in our study. We also found that Pseudarthrobacter was the easiest to aerosolize during the sludge biostabilization process.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

Sludge / Composting / Bioaerosol / Bioaerosolization index / High-throughput sequencing / 4′, 6-diamidino-2-phenylindole (DAPI)

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to appreciate the financial support from the National Key R&D Program of China (No. 2018YFD-1100600).

Electronic Supplementary Material

Supplementary material is available in the online version of this article at https://doi.org/10.1007/s11783-020-1339-5 and is accessible for authorized users.

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