Characterization of microbial community structure and water distribution in coal chemical sludge.

Modern coal chemical industry is an important means to realize the clean utilization of coal resources, the coal chemical sludge generated during the process of coal conversion process is a typical refractory solid waste restricting the development of coal chemical industry since its extremely high water content and the poor dewaterability. It has been documented that the dewaterability of coal chemical sludge is affected by the microbial community structure and water distribution characteristics; and thus, it is necessary to investigate the microbial community information and water distribution in coal chemical sludge to provide theoretical guidance for the high-efficiency sludge dewatering technology. In this study, coal-to-olefins sludge and coal-to-oil sludge were selected and the microbial community structure of the two sludge was obtained through analyzing 16s rRNA gene sequencing, and the water distribution was obtained by DSC and LF-NMR method. The results show that the different sewage treatment processes chosen by two coal chemical industries lead to certain differences in the microbial community structures of coal chemical sludge, Proteobacteria, Bacteroidetes and Chloroflexi are the dominant phylum in the two sludge. The LF-NMR method can more accurately measure the water distribution, and the water in the sludge can be classified into bound water, mechanical bound water and free water according. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]