Temporal triggers of N2O emissions during cyclical and seasonal variations of a full-scale sequencing batch reactor treating municipal wastewater.

To investigate the major triggers of nitrous oxide (N2O) production in a full-scale wastewater treatment plant, N2O emissions and wastewater characteristics (ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, total nitrogen, dissolved inorganic carbon, dissolved organic carbon, pH, temperature, dissolved oxygen and specific oxygen uptake rate), the results of variations in the cycling of a sequential batch reactor (SBR, where only full nitrification was performed), were monitored seasonally for 16 months. Major triggers of N2O production were investigated based on a seasonal measured database using a random forest (RF) model and sensitivity analysis, which was applied to identify important input variables. As the result of seasonal monitoring in the full-scale SBR, the N2O emission factor relative to daily total nitrogen removal ranged from 0.05 to 2.68%, corresponding to a range of N2O production rate from 0.02 to 0.70 kg-N/day. Results from the RF model and sensitivity analysis revealed that emissions during nitrification were directly or indirectly related to nitrite accumulation, temperature, ammonia loading rate and the specific oxygen uptake rate ratio between ammonia oxidizing bacteria and nitrite oxidizing bacteria (sOUR-ratio). However, changes in the microbial community did not significantly impact N2O emissions. Based on these results, the sOUR-ratio could represent the major trigger for N2O emission in a full-scale BNR system: a higher sOUR-ratio value with an average of 3.13 ± 0.23 was linked to a higher N2O production rate with an average value of 1.27 ± 0.12 kg-N/day (corresponding to 3.96 ± 1.20% of N2O emission factor relative to daily TN removal), while a lower sOUR-ratio with an average value of 2.39 ± 0.27 was correlated with a lower N2O production average rate of 0.17 ± 0.11 kg-N/day (corresponding to 0.74 ± 0.69% of N2O emission factor) (p-value = 0.00001, Mann-Whitney test).