Congratulations to Dr Seongbong Heo and co-authors for their recent paper on enhancing PHA enrichment in granular sludges through control of settling strategies.
This paper is an excellent example of several key issues and themes within EBNet: the importance of interactions between engineering-scale interventions and complex microbial systems; the need for understanding and control across a wide range of scales, from microbial metabolism and ecology to hydrodynamics; and the transition from waste and wastewater treatment to resource recovery and generation of sustainable bio-based products.
Dr Yongqiang Liu, who leads EBNet’s Aerobic Granulation Processes WG and is a co-author supervising the study, said: “The most important finding of this work is that enrichment of PHA-accumulating organisms and PHA accumulation comparable to those achieved in conventional activated sludge can be attained in aerobic granular sludge — provided the settling strategy is properly designed. Moreover, granules offer denser biomass and far easier sludge-water separation, simplifying biomass harvesting for biopolymer extraction. This demonstrates that granular sludge is not just a wastewater treatment technology but a genuinely promising platform for the recovery of biopolymers such as PHA”.
Dr Heo was supported by a Basic Science Research Program grant from the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF), funded by the Ministry of Education (RS-2025-25436679). Co-author Prof Jeremy Webb is co-Director of the UK’s National Biofilms Innovation Centre (NBIC).
Famine-end settling enables granulation without loss of PHA enrichment in integrated nutrient-decoupled PHA production. Heo, S., Liu, Y.Q. and Webb, J., 2026. Chemical Engineering Journal, p.180045.
