Nutrient Removal from Municipal Wastewater and Microbial Community Analysis of a Combined ABR‐MBR (CAMBR) Process

Abstract

In order to reduce the external nutrient loads in Lake Taihu, it is known that controlling nutrient input is the most effective way of reducing the risk of blooms. In this regard, simultaneous nitrogen and phosphorus removal by using a combined system consisting of an anaerobic baffled reactor and an aerobic membrane bioreactor for municipal wastewater treatment under the operation condition (a hydraulic retention time of 7.5 h, a recycle ratio of 200% and dissolved oxygen of 3 mg/L) was investigated. The results demonstrated that the process had a good ability to adapt to the influent shift, and was able to achieve the simultaneous nutrient removal of both two kinds of municipal wastewaters effectively with the high removal efficiencies of chemical oxygen demand, ammonium, total nitrogen, and total phosphorus more than 89, 98, 65, and 83% respectively. Analysis of fluorescence in situ hybridization showed that ammonia‐oxidizing bacteria, nitrite‐oxidizing bacteria, and phosphorus accumulating organisms all slightly decreased may be due to the sudden drop of influent nutrient. In addition, the high sum of the three kinds of bacteria may be the underlying reason why the CAMBR process was efficient for nitrogen and phosphorus removal.