Bioaugmentation - Truth vs Myth

Since my company, Aster Bio, manufactures biological products including bioaugmentation cultures; I read many claims, studies, and comments on bioaugmentation (adding exogenous microbes to an environment). Often people selling bioaugmentation products give huge claims on product effectiveness (some of which are not possible). To counter this, critics often dismiss any potential application of bioaugmentation technology as "snake oil", "magic dust", or other dismissive name. Which group is correct? - Well as with many technologies, the truth is somewhere between the two extremes.

Below are listed the time-tested applications of bioaugmentation followed by the limits of bioaugmentation (even biological treatment as a whole):

Bioaugmentation - Proven Applications

• Startup of a wastewater treatment system
• Recovery following loss of biomass due to toxic event, mechanical failure, or washout
• Reduce acclimation time to a new waste stream or to combat variation in influent makeup or concentration
• Help stabilize biomass under both high and low temperature conditions
• Restore a population of slow growing organisms such as ammonia oxidizing bacteria (AOB) or sulfur oxidizing bacteria
• Change the biological population to a more favorable microbial distribution - such as filamentous organisms control in conjunction with disinfection

Bioaugmentation - Limitations 

• Cannot replace treatment time - all bacteria require time & proper F/M conditions to work
  
• Bioaugmentation may extend a treatment systems capacity, but cannot fix a grossly overloaded system
  
• Sludge wasting will still be required. While sludge volumes and entrapped water often decreases with bioaugmentation, wasting must be done to prevent accumulation of solids and dead cell mass - old sludge
  
• Low D.O. is fixed by adding aeration or more efficient aeration equipment - microbes or other chemical additives (other than peroxides) will crate higher D.O.
  
• Metal residuals are not controlled by microbes. Also, some xenobiotic materials are not readily degraded and will pass through a standard treatment system.