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Glossary

Acetogenic Bacteria

The term acetogen refers to a bacterium that generates acetate as a product of anaerobic respiration. This process is different from acetate fermentation, although both occur in the absence of oxygen and produce acetate. These organisms are also referred to as acetogenic bacteria, because all known acetogens are bacteria.
 

Alginic acid

Alginic acid, also called algin or alginate, is a viscous gum that is abundant in the cell walls of brown algae. It ranges from white to yellowish-brown and takes filamentous, granular, and powdered forms.
 

Anaerobic

Anaerobic is a technical word that literally means without air (where "air" is generally used to mean oxygen), as opposed to aerobic.

In wastewater treatment the absence of oxygen is indicated as anoxic, and anaerobic is used to indicate the absence of a common electron acceptor such as nitrate, sulphate, or oxygen.

 

Biomass Immobilization

Biomass cell immobilization is defined as the confinement of whole cells in an insoluble phase, which permits the free exchange of solutes from and towards the biomass, while at the same time isolating the cells from their surrounding medium.
 

COD

Chemical oxygen demand (COD) test is commonly used to indirectly measure the amount of organic compounds in water. It is expressed in milligrams per liter (mg/L), which indicates the mass of oxygen consumed per liter of solution.
 

Effluent

Effluent is an outflowing of water from a natural body of water or from a man-made structure.

Effluent in the man-made sense is generally considered to be water pollution, such as the outflow from a sewage treatment facility or the wastewater discharge from industrial facilities. An effluent sump pump, for instance, pumps waste from toilets installed below a main sewage line.

 

   

Hydraulic retention time

Hydraulic retention time (HRT) is a measure of the average length of time that a soluble compound remains in a constructed reactor.
   

Methane

Methane is a chemical compound with the molecular formula CH4. It is the simplest alkane, and the principal component of natural gas.
   

Methanogens

Methanogens are microorganisms that produce methane as a metabolic byproduct in anoxic conditions. They were once classified as archaebacteria, but archaebacteria have now been reclassified as archaea—a group quite distinct from bacteria.
   

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