Effect of Increased Influent COD on Relieving the Toxicity of CeO2 NPs on Aerobic Granular Sludge

Due to the increased use of cerium oxide nanoparticles (CeO2 NPs), their potential environmental risks have caused concern. However, their effects on the aerobic granular sludge (AGS) process and the later recovery of AGS are still unclear. In this study, we comprehensively determined the changes in pollutant removal and the levels of extracellular polymeric substances (EPS) in AGS that were exposed to CeO2 NP treatments (0 (the control, R0), 1 (R1), and 5 (R5) mg/L), following an increase in the influent chemical oxygen demand (COD). An increase in the CeO2 NP concentration enhanced their inhibitory effect on the removal of total nitrogen (TN) and total phosphorus (TP), and promoted the production of polysaccharides (PS) and proteins (PN) in loosely bound EPS (LB-EPS) or tightly bound EPS (TB-EPS), as well as the dissolved organic carbon (DOC) components in EPS, but had no long-term effects on the removal of organic matter. When the addition of CeO2 NPs was stopped and the concentration of influent COD increased, the TN and TP removal efficiencies in R1 and R5 slowly increased and recovered. In R1, they were only 4.55 ± 0.55% and 2.71 ± 0.58% lower than in R0, respectively, while the corresponding values for R5 were 5.06 ± 0.46% and 6.20 ± 0.63%. Despite the LB-EPS and TB-EPS concentrations in the R1 and R5 treatments recovering and being similar to the levels in the control when no CeO2 NPs were added, they were still slightly higher than in the R0, which indicating that the negative effects of CeO2 NPs could not be completely eliminated due to the residual CeO2 NP levels in AGS.