New findings on the application of microbial extracellular polymeric substances (EPS) in minimizing harbor siltation have been reported recently. However, the key components of EPS influencing fluid mud anti-settlement properties have not been well elucidated. The relationships between EPS contents and anti-settleability of mud were thereby investigated. Results showed that, after cultivation with nutrients, the settling velocity of mud increased with the increase of crude EPS contents, indicating anti-settleability of mud was positively correlated to EPS content. The yield and composition of EPS were analyzed by extraction with five different methods. It was shown that polysaccharide and protein were the main components of EPS with verification by Fourier transformed infrared spectroscopy, and polysaccharide was the dominant composition in bound EPS. Thus, it was speculated that polysaccharide in EPS was the key component influencing the anti-settlement properties of mud. Moreover, ultrasound process was the optimum protocol for extracting EPS from mud.
Extracellular polymeric substances (EPS), Component analysis, Fluid mud, Anti-settlement properties
© The Author(s) 2014. Open Access. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License which permits unrestricted use, sharing, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.