Removal of Nitrogen and Phosphorus From Reject Water Using Chlorella vulgaris Algae After Partial Nitrification/Anammox Process.

Abstract

Wastewater containing nutrients like ammonia, nitrite, nitrate and phosphates have been identified as the main cause of eutrophication in natural waters. Therefore, a suitable treatment is needed. In classical biological processes, nitrogen and phosphorus removal is expensive, especially due to the lack of biodegradable carbon, thus new methods are investigated. In this paper, the new possibility of nitrogen and phosphorus removal in side stream after the partial nitrification/Anammox process is proposed. Research was carried out in a lab-scale vertical tubular photobioreactor (VTR) fed with real reject water, from dewatering of digested sludge, after partial nitrification/Anammox process from lab-scale sequencing batch reactor (SBR). Nitrogen and phosphorus concentrations were measured every three days. The average nitrogen and phosphorus loads were 0.0503 ± 0.036 g N g(vss)/d and 0.0389 ± 0.013 g P g(vss)/d accordingly. Results have shown that microalgae were able to efficiently remove nitrogen and phosphorus. The average nitrogen removal was 36.46% and phosphorus removal efficiency varied between 93 and 100%.