Abstract
Anaerobic ammonium oxidation (anammox) is a process of ammonium and nitrite conversion into nitrogen gas. Nowadays, anammox is applied into many wastewater treatment plants worldwide. However, anammox bacteria are characterized by a slow growth rate, which may cause problems in maintaining the biomass in the system. The promising technique which can help to maintain the biomass in the reactor and effectively prevent loss of anammox bacteria from a system is immobilization. Selection and optimization of the appropriate immobilization technique for investigated biomass is crucial for conducting an effective process. One of the ways for bacteria immobilization is gel entrapment. The main goal of the study was to test sodium alginate as an immobilization medium for anammox biomass. In the present study procedure of immobilization in sodium alginate was optimised, then the mechanical and chemical properties of the obtained pellets were investigated. Series of batch experiments revealed that immobilized anammox biomass was able to remove ammonia and nitrite nitrogen effectively. The calculated specific anammox activity (SAA) for immobilized anammox biomass was 0.18 g N·gVSS-1·d-1, while for non-immobilized biomass was 0.36 g N·gVSS-1·d-1.
Highlights
Biological anaerobic ammonium oxidation is a promising process for the treatment of ammonium – rich wastewater
Different biomass immobilization techniques are examined for the effectiveness of wastewater treatment and the properties of immobilized material [10, 12, 13, 18, 19]
In the present study anammox biomass was immobilized in sodium alginate, which turned out to be a non-expensive and simple method
Summary
Biological anaerobic ammonium oxidation (anammox) is a promising process for the treatment of ammonium – rich wastewater. Over the past decade many technologies have been developed and investigated for their applicability to the anammox process and several have made it into full-scale [3]. Optimal temperature for anammox bacteria (30–37°C) is higher than average temperature of wastewater (10–15°C) [4]. One of the ways to cultivate slow-growing bacteria and develop a stable and high rate nitrogen removal anammox system is to immobilize biomass in a reactor. Immobilization of anammox cells will lead to higher anammox biomass retention and will give possibility for anammox bacteria to growth inside the carrier. Many modern wastewater treatment plants rely on immobilized microorganisms. Biological wastewater treatment is still the largest scale application of immobilized cell technology [8]
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