Reducing Cost and Environmental Impact of Wastewater Treatment with Denitrifying Methanotrophs, Anammox, and Mainstream Anaerobic Treatment

Environ Sci Technol. 2019 Nov 5;53(21):12935-12944. doi: 10.1021/acs.est.9b04764. Epub 2019 Oct 21.

Abstract

In water resource recovery facilities, sidestream biological nitrogen removal via anaerobic ammonium oxidation (anammox) is more energy and cost efficient than conventional nitrification-denitrification. However, under mainstream conditions, nitrite oxidizing bacteria (NOB) out-select anammox bacteria for nitrite produced by ammonium oxidizing bacteria (AOB). Therefore, nitrite production is the bottleneck in mainstream anammox nitrogen removal. Nitrate-dependent denitrifying anaerobic methane oxidizing archaea (n-damo) oxidize methane and reduce nitrate to nitrite. The nitrite supply challenge in mainstream anammox implementation could be solved with a microbial community of AOB, NOB, n-damo, and anammox with methane from anaerobic sludge digestion or a mainstream anaerobic membrane bioreactor (AnMBR). The cost and environmental impact of traditional nitrification/dentrification relative to AOB/anammox and AOB/anammox/n-damo systems, with and without an AnMBR, were compared with a stoichiometric model. AnMBR implementation reduced costs and emission rates at moderate to high nutrient loading by lowering aeration and sludge handling demands while increasing methane available for cogeneration. AnMBR/AOB/anammox systems reduced cost and GHG emission by up to $0.303/d/m3 and 1.72 kg equiv. CO2/d/m3, respectively, while AnMBR/AOB/anammox/n-damo systems saw a similar reduction of at least $0.300/d/m3 and 1.65 kg equiv. CO2/d/m3 in addition to alleviating the necessity to stop nitrification at nitrate, allowing easier aeration control.

MeSH terms

  • Ammonium Compounds*
  • Anaerobiosis
  • Bioreactors
  • Denitrification
  • Methane
  • Nitrogen
  • Oxidation-Reduction
  • Wastewater*

Substances

  • Ammonium Compounds
  • Waste Water
  • Nitrogen
  • Methane