High-rate nitrogen removal in a continuous biofilter anammox reactor for treating low-concentration nitrogen wastewater at moderate temperature

The high-rate nitrogen removal in a continuous biofilter anammox reactor (CBAR) was investigated to treat lowconcentration nitrogen wastewater. Shortening hydraulic retention time (HRT) gradually could restart CBAR and accumulate anammox bacteria effectively in the reactor, where the carmine anammox granular sludge and biofilm were coexisted well. It spent 21 days to restart CBAR completely after it had been idle for 116 days. Meanwhile, the total nitrogen removal rate remained stable at 86.42% accompanied with a total biomass concentration of 26.02 g-SS/L in 0 - 20 cm zone under nitrogen loading rate of 4.25 +/- 0.10 kg-N/(m3 center dot day), HRT of 20 min and 25 degrees C. In addition, the specific anammox activity of biomass exceeded 0.28 g-N/(g-VSS center dot day) in 0 20 cm zone, which was related with a high relative abundance of Candidatus Brocadia (>30%) in the same zone. Thus, it is a feasible approach to adopt CBAR to treat low-concentration nitrogen wastewater efficiently.

Automated summary

By shortening the hydraulic retention time, it is possible to effectively restart the continuous biofilter anammox reactor and efficiently remove low-concentration nitrogen wastewater.