The effectiveness of using protease and combinations of protease and high-intensity ultrasound for high-purity, high-yield tamarind seed polysaccharide (TSP) production was investigated. Tamarind kernel powder (TKP) suspension was treated with protease alone at 0.16, 0.48, and 0.80 units/mL and with protease-ultrasound combinations over 3 different orders of sequence (before, simultaneous with, and after protease digestion) using combinations of 0.48 units/mL protease and high-intensity ultrasound at 25% and 50% amplitude for 15 and 30 min. The long protease digestion time could produce high-purity isolated TSP, but the polysaccharide yields were lower. The polysaccharide purity and yield were highly improved, even at a shorter protease digestion time, when the protease treatment was combined with high-intensity ultrasound. The increased amplitude level and sonication time decreased the average molecular weight of the polysaccharide. The rheological properties of the TKP and the isolated TSP, from nondestructive oscillatory measurements, demonstrated that the latter present a viscoelastic solution. The decreasing of protein content resulted in better elasticity of the solution. The power law model could be used to fit the down curve between shear rate and shear stress data. The consistency coefficient (K) increased while the flow behavior index decreased with the increased purity of the polysaccharide as a result of increasing increased digestion time, enzyme concentration, sonication power, and sonication time.

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A new manganese-oxidizing strain FM-2 was screened out from biological activated carbon (BAC) filter column and was identified as Citrobacter freundii. The results of the systematic study on this species are as follows: At 27 , the optimum pH for Citrobacter sp. FM-2 to remove manganese was 7.0-8.0.The best removal rate of manganese under 27 , pH 7.0 by FM-2 was reached at 4 d, being 76.2%; Compared with adsorption, biological oxidation played a dominant role in this removing process. Almost 75.7% of manganese was oxidized into oxides by Citrobacter sp and there were some particular oxides analogs generated on the bacterial surface; A 296bp DNA fragment amplified from Citrobacter sp. FM-2 revealed that this species has multicopper oxidase genes. Meanwhile, the phylogenetic tree indicated that compared with other related species, Citrobacter sp. FM-2 has its own evolutional independence.

In order to investigate biological properties of the dominant strain from the biological activated carbon (BAC) filter column, a novel, dominant iron-and-manganese removal strain, FM-2, was screened from BAC mature biological membrane. By phylogenetic analysis based on 16S rDNA sequence comparison, FM-2 was identified to be Citrobacter freundii. The experimental results indicated that Citrobacter sp. FM-2 could remove 83.6% Fe (II) and 64.9% Mn (II) after four days. Inoculum greatly influenced the iron-manganese removal performances. The appropriate inoculum concentration was 5%. The initial concentrations of Fe (II) and Mn (II) had little negative influence on its removal performance. When Fe (II) and Mn (II) concentrations were 32.9~85.7 and 25.7~46.7 mg/L, respectively, the removal of Fe (II) and Mn (II) followed the first-order dynamical model with the velocity constants of 0.8528~0.9937/d and 0.3001~0.3179/d, respectively.