In general, majority of biomaterials have shown good biosorption capacities towards certain of metal ions. In this work, microbial flocculant GA1 (MBFGA1) compound with PAC was used to control the residual aluminum in flocculation water treatment. The fluorescence spectrophotometry combined with different pretreatment methods was employed to divide the species of aluminum and determine their concentration. The results indicated that non-labile monomeric aluminum was the dominant specie in residual aluminum and addition of MBFGA1 could efficiently eliminate them. Two quadratic polynomial models with the response variables of flocculating rate and labile monomeric aluminum concentration were established by response surface methodology, respectively. The optimal flocculating conditions were MBFGA1 at 109.37 mg/L, PAC at 81.87 mg/L, initial pH at 8.5, time duration of stir 72.5 min and ambient temperature at 24.3 C. Fourier transform-infrared spectra and environmental scanning electron microscope analysis indicated that MBFGA1 holded a large number of functional groups, which had strong capacity on binding aluminum and reducing its residual level during coagulation-flocculation. (c) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.