Coupled aerobic and anoxic biodegradation for quinoline and nitrogen removals

Abstract

Quinoline (C₉H₇N) commonly occurs in wastewaters from the chemical, pharmaceutical, and dyeing industries. As quinoline is biodegraded, nitrogen is released as ammonium. Total-N removal requires that the ammonium-N be nitrified and then denitrified. The objective of this study was to couple quinoline biodegradation with total-N removal. In a proof-of-concept step, activated sludge was sequenced from aerobic to anoxic stages. The ammonium nitrogen released from quinoline biodegradation in the aerobic stage was nitrified to nitrate in parallel. Anoxic biodegradation of the aerobic effluent then brought about nitrogen and COD removals through denitrification. Then, simultaneous quinoline biodegradation and total-N removal were demonstrated in a novel airlift internal loop biofilm reactor (AILBR) having aerobic and anoxic zones. Experimental results showed that the AILBR could achieve complete removal of quinoline, 91% COD removal, and 85% total-N removal when glucose added as a supplemental electron donor once nitrate was formed.

Keywords

Quinoline / biofilm / reactor / biodegradation / denitrification

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Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the financial support by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 50978164), Key Project of Basic Research in Shanghai (No. 11JC1409100), the Special Foundation of Chinese Colleges and Universities Doctoral Discipline (No. 20113127110002), Special Fund of State Key Joint Laboratory of Environment Simulation and Pollution Control (No. 13K09ESPCT), Program of Shanghai Normal University (No. SK201336 and DZL 123), and the United States National Science Foundation (No. 0651794).

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2014 Higher Education Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg