Starting-up performances and microbial community shifts in the coupling process (SAPD-A) with sulfide autotrophic partial denitrification (SAPD) and anammox treating nitrate and ammonium contained wastewater

Abstract

A novel coupling process (SAPD-A) with sulfide autotrophic partial denitrification (SAPD) (NO3−-N→NO2−-N) and anaerobic ammonium oxidation (Anammox) was developed using anaerobic sequencing batch reactor (ASBR) in this work. The integrated process comprised two stages. Firstly, the starting-up of SAPD process succeeded by gradually increasing the influent nitrate and sulfide in 95 days. The average nitrate removal efficiency (NRE) and NO2−-N accumulation rates were 71.24% ± 0.21% and 46.44% ± 0.53% at SAPD process (days 75–95). Then, successful coupling process (SAPD-A) was implemented in two stages (stage I and stage II of SAPD-A). In stage I, it is feasible to promote the successful construction of SAPD-A process by elevating influent ammonium only based on SAPD system, making the NRE increased from 44.45% ± 0.46% (day 95) to 64.62% ± 0.12% at the end of stage I in SAPD-A system (day 126). Meanwhile, the ammonium nitrogen removal efficiency (ARE) and total nitrogen removal efficiency (TN-RE) also rose up to 42.46% ± 2.02% and 63.28% ± 0.54% respectively. Furthermore, the average ARE, NRE and TN-RE during the stage II in the bioreactor could reach 65.17% ± 1.45%, 74.50% ± 0.81% and 77.81% ± 0.37% by loading some biofilters (with of approximate 10% of the volume of the bioreactor) attached anaerobic ammonium oxidation bacteria (AnAOB). High-throughput sequencing results showed that the dominant genera concerning nitrogen removal were norank_f_norank_o_Fimbriimonadates (with the abundance of 2.88–8.54%), norank_ o_ norank _ c_ OM190 (2.48–4.41%), norank_f_norank_o_norank_c_WWE3 (11.01–17.69%), subgroup_10 (1.97–3.81%), Limnobacter（2.17–3.49%）, norank_f_n orank_ o_norank_ c_OLB14 (2.03–5.23%), norank-f-PHOS-HE36 (2.18–5.5%), Ellin6067 (1.34–2.24%) and Candidatus_ Brocadia (1.95–2.42%) during the whole starting-up period of coupling SAPD-A process. Batch experiments revealed that the sulfide was fully oxidized within 2 h, with the maximum reaction rate of 38.30 ± 1.53 mg (L h)−1 in the first 1 h. Simultaneously, the concentration of nitrate sharply decreased from 53.08 ± 0.23 mg L−1 to 24.16 ± 0.42 mg L−1 with the reaction rate of 66.41 ± 2.12 mg (L h)−1 in 0.5 h. Also, the ammonium concentration significantly declined from 47.88 ± 0.34 mg L−1 to 10.98 ± 0.39 mg L−1 in 8 h. Anammox process was responsible for the dominant nitrogen removal in the coupling SAPD-A system.