Magnetite enhancing sludge anaerobic fermentation to improve wastewater biological nitrogen removal: Pilot-scale verification

Abstract

Alkaline anaerobic fermentation for acids production has been considered as an effective method to recover resources from waste activated sludge, and magnetite could improve the quality of fermentation liquid. Here, we have constructed a pilot-scale sludge alkaline anaerobic fermentation process enhanced by magnetite to produce short chain fatty acids (SCFAs), and used them as external carbon sources to improve the biological nitrogen removal of municipal sewage. Results showed that the addition of magnetite could significantly increase the production of SCFAs. The average concentration of SCFAs in fermentation liquid reached 3718.6 ± 101.5 mg COD/L, and the average concentration of acetic acid reached 2368.8 ± 132.1 mg COD/L. The fermentation liquid was used in the mainstream A2O process, and its TN removal efficiency increased from 48.0% ± 5.4% to 62.2% ± 6.6%. The main reason was that the fermentation liquid is conducive to the succession of sludge microbial community the denitrification process, increasing the abundance of denitrification functional bacteria and realizing the enhancement of denitrification process. Besides, magnetite can promote the activity of related enzymes to enhance the biological nitrogen removal. Finally, the economic analysis showed that magnetite-enhanced sludge anaerobic fermentation was economically and technically feasible to promote the biological nitrogen removal of municipal sewage.