Abstract

The biological nitrogen removal of municipal wastewater was successfully improved by integrating anammox in a step-feed sequencing biofilm batch reactor. Despite fluctuating influent carbon to nitrogen ratio (1.9–5.1) and decreasing temperature (24.1–16.3 ℃), nitrogen removal efficiency of 95.9 ± 1.4 % and nitrogen removal rate of 0.23 ± 0.02 kg N/(m3·d) were successfully maintained without requirement of external carbon sources. The advanced removal performance was mainly attributed to the enhanced anammox. Anammox bacteria presented a high relative abundance (42.9% in biofilms, 1.5% in flocs) and anammox activity was as high as 5.42 ± 0.12 mg N/(g volatile suspended solids·h). Further analysis suggested that flexible control of influent organic and ammonium through step-feeding could provide multiple substrate supply for anammox reaction, potentially resulting in stable combination of anammox with hybrid-nitrite-shunt processes. Overall, this study provides a promising anammox-related application with simple-control step-feed strategy for enhanced and stable nitrogen removal from carbon-limited municipal wastewater.

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