The stable operation of nitritation process with the continuous granular sludge-type reactor and microbial community analysis.

ABSTRACT

The nitritation step is the fundament for the biological nitrogen removal regardless of the traditional nitrification and denitrification process, the nitrite shunt process or the anammox process. Thus, exploring the effective nitritation performance is an important aspect of biological nitrogen removal. This study explored the upper limit of nitritation rate by increasing hydraulic residence time with the well-mixed and continuous granular sludge-type reactor characterized with low complexity and easy operation. The results showed that with the nitrogen loading rate of 1.0 kg/m3/d, the nitrite production rate could reach up to 0.65 kg/m3/d with the nitrite production efficiency of 63.49%, which is remarkable compared to that in the previously similar research. The microbial analysis indicated that ammonia-oxidizing bacteria was successfully enriched (13.27%) and genus Nitrosomonas was the dominant bacteria type. Besides, the activity of ammonium oxidizing bacteria in the continuous flow reactor was higher than that of other reactor types. The growth of vorticella on the sludge was also found in the reactor. The test of specific sludge activity and the microbe analysis both indicated that the nitrite-oxidizing bacteria was well inhibited during the whole experiment, which indicated the strategy of simply adjusting the dissolved oxygen is effective for running of nitritation process. The phosphorus removal performance was also achieved with a removal efficiency of 23.53%. The functional composition of the microbial community in the samples was predicted and finally transformation mechanism of nitrogen in sludge was drawn. In sum, this study indicated the superior performance of the granule sludge-type nitritation process and give a reference for the application of biological nitrogen removal technology.