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Aeration control strategies to stimulate simultaneous nitrification-denitrification via nitrite during the formation of aerobic granular sludge

  • Environmental biotechnology
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Abstract

In this study, a sequencing batch reactor (SBR), treating synthetic wastewater (COD/N = 5), was operated in two stages. During stage I, an aeration control strategy based on oxygen uptake rate (OUR) was applied, to accomplish nitrogen removal via nitrite >80%. In stage II, the development of aerobic granular sludge (AGS) was examined while two aeration control strategies (OUR and pH slope) maintained the nitrite pathway and optimized the simultaneous nitrification-denitrification (SND) performance. Stimulation of slow-growing organisms, (denitrifying) polyphosphate-accumulating organisms (D)PAO and (denitrifying) glycogen-accumulating organisms (D)GAO leads to full granulation (at day 200, SVI10 = 47.0 mL/g and SVI30 = 43.1 mL/g). The average biological nutrient removal efficiencies, for nitrogen and phosphorus, were 94.6 and 83.7%, respectively. Furthermore, the benefits of an increased dissolved oxygen concentration (1.0–2.0 mg O2/L) were shown as biomass concentrations increased with approximately 2 g/L, and specific ammonium removal rate and phosphorus uptake rate increased with 33 and 44%, respectively. It was shown that the combination of both aeration phase-length control strategies provided an innovative method to achieve SND via nitrite in AGS.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Research Group BioGEM, Bio-Chemical Green Engineering & Materials, Faculty of Applied Engineering, University of Antwerp, Salesianenlaan 90, 2660, Antwerp, Belgium

    Thomas Dobbeleers, Jolien D’aes, Michel Caluwé, Veerle Akkermans, Dominique Daens, Luc Geuens & Jan Dries

  2. Basic and Applied Microbiology Institute, Genetic Engineering and Cellular and Molecular Biology, National University of Quilmes, Buenos Aires, Argentina

    Solange Miele

Authors
  1. Thomas Dobbeleers
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  2. Jolien D’aes
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  3. Solange Miele
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  4. Michel Caluwé
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  5. Veerle Akkermans
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  6. Dominique Daens
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  7. Luc Geuens
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  8. Jan Dries
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Correspondence to Jan Dries.

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Funding

This study was funded by the Flanders Innovation and Entrepreneurship Agency (grant number 131325).

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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This article does not contain any studies with human participants or animals performed by any of the authors.

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Dobbeleers, T., D’aes, J., Miele, S. et al. Aeration control strategies to stimulate simultaneous nitrification-denitrification via nitrite during the formation of aerobic granular sludge. Appl Microbiol Biotechnol 101, 6829–6839 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-017-8415-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-017-8415-1

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