The key factor in High Pressure Hydrogenotrophic Denitrification: Hydrogen partial pressure

Abstract

In the envisaged hydrogen economy, H2 could be an interesting alternative electron donor for the denitrification of drinking water or wastewater. The main obstacle to engineering the hydrogenotrophic denitrification process is the low solubility of H2 in water under atmospheric pressure, which limits denitrification rate and nitrogen removal efficiency. In this paper, we demonstrated a novel configuration of hydrogenotrophic denitrification, namely High Pressure Hydrogenotrophic Denitrification (HPHD). Elevated H2 partial pressure (pH2) was employed to increase dissolved H2 concentration and concomitantly enhance denitrification rate. Our results showed that the specific denitrification rate increased from 9.6 mg N/(gVSS·h) at 0.5 bars to 51.0 mg N/(gVSS·h) at 9 bars in HPHD. The denitrification effect could be retained with elevated pH2 at a low temperature. The specific denitrification rate at 3 bars and 15 °C was 20.5 mg N/(gVSS·h), approximately 1.5 times that at 1 bar and 30 °C, which was quite beneficial for hydrogenotrophic denitrification under cold conditions. Different from nitrite reduction, less impact was observed on nitrate reduction by low temperature, which explained high nitrite accumulation in HPHD at 15 °C. Overall, our investigations shed light on the role of pH2 in the promising solution for nitrogen removal in HPHD.