Long-term operation of a novel pilot-scale six tanks alternately operating activated sludge process in treating domestic wastewater

Abstract

The performance of a new pilot-scale six tanks activated sludge process has been evaluated for 303 d, receiving real domestic wastewater with a flow rate of 15–24.4 L/h. Partial nitrification via nitrite and microbial community structure were investigated in this system. The result shows that the nitrite accumulation rate was achieved successfully over 94% in the last aerobic compartment through a combination of short hydraulic retention time and low dissolved oxygen (DO) level. Fluorescence in situ hybridization analysis was used to correlate ammonia-oxidizing bacteria (AOB) numbers with nutrient removal via nitrite. It was shown that in response to complete and partial nitrification modes, the numbers of AOB population were 7.7×107 cells/g mixed liquor suspended solids (MLSS) and 5.31×108 cells/g MLSS, respectively. The morphology of the sludge indicated that there is a small rod-shaped and spherical cluster which was mainly dominantly bacterial according to scanning electron microscope. Higher pollutant removal efficiencies of 86.2%, 98%, and 96.1%, for total nitrogen, , and total phosphorus, respectively, were achieved by a long-term operation of the six tanks activated sludge process at a low DO concentration and low chemical oxygen demand to nitrogen ratio which were approximately equal to the complete nitrification–denitrification with the addition of an external carbon source at a concentration of 1.5–2.5 mg/L.