Abstract
Partial nitritation is necessary for the implementation of the mainstream anammox (anaerobic ammonium oxidation) process in wastewater treatment plants. However, the difficulty in outcompeting nitrite-oxidizing bacteria (NOB) at mainstream conditions hinders the performance of partial nitritation. The present work aimed to develop a high-rate partial nitritation process for low-ammonium wastewater treatment at low temperatures by seeding aerobic granules. Experimental results suggested that both stratified structure of nitrifiers developed in the granules and sufficient residual ammonium concentration (18–35 mg N L−1) in the bulk liquid contributed to efficient NOB repression. With the hydraulic retention time progressively shortened from 1.0 to 0.17 h, the influent nitrogen loading rate of the partial nitritation process reached 6.8 ± 0.4 kg N m−3 d−1 even at 10–15 °C. The high concentration (7.5 gVSS L−1) and activity (0.48 g N g−1 VSS d−1 at 11 °C) of granular sludge made the reactor possess an overcapacity evaluated by the ratio between the actual ammonium oxidation rate of the granules and their maximum potential. The overcapacity helped the reactor to face the adverse effect of decreasing temperatures. Overall, this work indicated the great potential of applying aerobic granules to achieve high-rate partial nitritation at mainstream conditions. Moreover, anammox bacteria with a relative abundance of 2.8% was also identified in the partial nitritation granules at the end of this study, suggesting that the granules provided a habitable niche for anammox bacteria growth. Note that these results cannot fully relate to the treatment of real domestic/municipal wastewater, they are a source of important information increasing the knowledge about low temperature partial nitrification.
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Acknowledgements
This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 51808367), and the National & Local Joint Engineering Laboratory for Municipal Sewage Resource Utilization Technology, Suzhou University of Science and Technology (No. 2018KF05). The authors also acknowledge support from the Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Environmental Science and Engineering, and the Jiangsu Collaborative Innovation Center of Technology and Material of Water Treatment.
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All authors declare that they have no conflict of interest. The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper. The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered as potential competing interests: Wenru Liu, Yaoliang Shen, Dianhai Yang.
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Liu, W., Shen, Y. & Yang, D. Achieving high-rate partial nitritation with aerobic granular sludge at low temperatures. Biodegradation 33, 45–58 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10532-021-09965-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10532-021-09965-8