Incorporation of the complete ammonia oxidation (comammox) process for modeling nitrification in suspended growth wastewater treatment systems

Abstract

The newly discovered process complete ammonia oxidation (comammox) has changed the traditional understanding of nitrification. In this study, three possible concepts of comammox were developed and incorporated as part of an extended two-step nitrification model. For model calibration and validation, two series of long-term biomass washout experiments were carried out at 12 °C and 20 °C in a laboratory sequencing batch reactor. The inoculum biomass was withdrawn from a large biological nutrient removal wastewater treatment plant. The efficiency of the examined models was compared based on the behaviors of ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate in the studied reactor. Predictions of the conventional approach to comammox, assuming the direct oxidation of ammonia to nitrate, were slightly better than the two other approaches. Simulation results revealed that comammox could be responsible for the conversion of >20% of the influent ammonia load. Therefore, the role of commamox in the nitrogen mass balance in activated sludge systems should not be neglected and requires further investigation. Furthermore, sensitivity and correlation analysis revealed that the maximum growth rates (μ), oxygen half-saturation (KO), and decay rates (b) of the canonical nitrifiers and comammox were the most sensitive factors, and the highest correlation was found between μ and b among all considered kinetic parameters. The estimated μ values by the best model were 0.57, 0.11, and 0.15 d−1 for AOB, NOB, and comammox bacteria, respectively.