Achieving simultaneous removal of carbon and nitrogen by an integrated process of anaerobic membrane bioreactor and flow-through biofilm reactor

Abstract

In this study, a combined system consisting of an anaerobic membrane bioreactor (AnMBR) and flow-through biofilm reactor/CANON (FTBR/CANON) was developed to simultaneously remove carbon and nitrogen from synthetic livestock wastewater. The average removal efficiencies of total nitrogen (TN) were 64.2 and 76.4% with influent ammonium (NH₄⁺-N) concentrations of approximately 200 and 500 mg/L, respectively. The COD removal efficiencies were higher than 98.0% during the entire operation. Mass balance analysis showed that COD and TN were mainly removed by the AnMBR and FTBR/CANON, respectively. The anammox process was the main nitrogen removal pathway in the combined system, with a contribution of over 80%. High functional bacterial activity was observed in the combined system. Particularly, an increase in the NH₄⁺-N concentration considerably improved the anammox activity of the biofilm in the FTBR/CANON. 16S rRNA high-throughput sequencing revealed that Methanosaeta, Candidatus Methanofastidiosum, and Methanobacterium were the dominant methanogens in the AnMBR granular sludge. In the CANON biofilm, Nitrosomonas and Candidatus Kuenenia were identified as aerobic and anaerobic ammonium-oxidizing bacteria, respectively. In summary, this study proposes a combined AnMBR and FTBR/CANON process targeting COD and nitrogen removal, and provides a potential alternative for treating high-strength wastewater.

Keywords

Anaerobic membrane bioreactors / Anammox / Bacterial community / Livestock wastewater / Methanogens / Nitrogen removal

Data Availability Statement

All data generated or analyzed during this study are included in this published article and its supplementary information files or are available upon request.

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Xueshen Wu: Writing - original draft, Investigation, Formal analysis, Data curation. Chao Wang: Methodology, Data curation. Depeng Wang: Methodology, Formal analysis, Data curation. Ahmed Tawfik: Writing - review & editing. Ronghua Xu: Methodology, Data curation. Zhong Yu: Methodology, Formal analysis, Data curation. Fangang Meng: Writing - review & editing, Supervision, Methodology, Funding acquisition.

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (nos. 32161143031, 22376228 and 52200081), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Sun Yat-sen University, 23lgzy005).

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