ABSTRACT
Bacterial supplementation, or bioaugmentation, is a technique in which bacterial strains are added to a biological waste treatment process as a means of enhancing process performance. The bacterial culture used as the supplement may consist of specially selected naturally occurring strains, mutated strains, or even bioengineered organisms. These cultures usually are purchased from commercial supplement manufacturers but could be produced on site. Supplementation has been suggested for reducing process start-up time through the addition of large quantities of organisms, recovery from process upsets, enhancement of treatment rates, and/or for the addition of unique degradative abilities such as the breakdown of some of the more recalcitrant priority pollutants.
