Enhanced Pollutants Removal in a Municipal Wastewater Treatment Plant with Multistage A/O Process

Abstract

Removal of conventional pollutants as well as genotoxicity was studied along a multistage A/O process, which was based on the monitoring data in a Municipal Wastewater Treatment Plant (MWWTP) of Yixing City. The results showed that the multistage A/O process removed (67.3±7.0)% of COD, (93.7±1.5)% of NH4+-N, (65.3±7.9)% of TN and (60.0±18.7)% of TP, respectively, which played a dominant role in the removal performance of the whole wastewater treatment process. The multistage A/O process showed significant ability to reduce alkanes, halogenated hydrocarbons and alcohols in the municipal wastewater, while it failed to remove the aromatic proteins which were the main fluorescent substances of this wastewater. Furthermore, the process removed 82.8% genotoxicity from its influent. Low organic load, single-phase influent and undesirable carbon source feeding pattern, which caused the downstream A/O stages being not fully utilized, were considered as the predominant reasons for the relatively low performance of the multistage A/O process. Multi-phase feeding and adjusting carbon source feeding pattern were thereby proposed. The results were considered to be helpful for improving the operational performance of the MWWTP and useful for performance evaluation of MWWTPs with similar process.