Adaptation and characterization of thermophilic anammox in bioreactors

Abstract

Anammox, the oxidation of ammonium with nitrite, is a key microbial process in the nitrogen cycle. Under mesophilic conditions (below 40 °C), it is widely implemented to remove nitrogen from wastewaters lacking organic carbon. Despite evidence of the presence of anammox bacteria in high-temperature environments, reports on the cultivation of thermophilic anammox bacteria are limited to a short-term experiment of 2 weeks. This study showcases the adaptation of a mesophilic inoculum to thermophilic conditions, and its characterization. First, an attached growth technology was chosen to obtain the process. In an anoxic fixed-bed biofilm bioreactor (FBBR), a slow linear temperature increase from 38 to over 48 °C (0.05-0.07 °C d^-1) was imposed to the community over 220 days, after which the reactor was operated at 48 °C for over 200 days. Maximum total nitrogen removal rates reached up to 0.62 g N L^-1 d^-1. Given this promising performance, a suspended growth system was tested. The obtained enrichment culture served as inoculum for membrane bioreactors (MBR) operated at 50 °C, reaching a maximum total nitrogen removal rate of 1.7 g N L^-1 d^-1 after 35 days. The biomass in the MBR had a maximum specific anammox activity of 1.1 ± 0.1 g NH₄⁺-N g^-1 VSS d^-1, and the growth rate was estimated at 0.075-0.19 d^-1. The thermophilic cultures displayed nitrogen stoichiometry ratios typical for mesophilic anammox: 0.93-1.42 g NO₂^--N_removed g^-1 NH₄⁺-N_removed and 0.16-0.35 g NO₃^--N_produced g^-1 NH₄⁺-N_removed. Amplicon and Sanger sequencing of the 16S rRNA genes revealed a disappearance of the original "Ca. Brocadia" and "Ca. Jettenia" taxa, yielding Planctomycetes members with only 94-95% similarity to "Ca. Brocadia anammoxidans" and "Ca. B. caroliniensis", accounting for 45% of the bacterial FBBR community. The long-term operation of thermophilic anammox reactors and snapshot views on the nitrogen stoichiometry, kinetics and microbial community open up the development path of thermophilic partial nitritation/anammox. A first economic assessment highlighted that treatment of sludge reject water from thermophilic anaerobic digestion of sewage sludge may become attractive.

Keywords: AnAOB; Biological nitrogen removal; Nitrification; Nutrient removal and recovery; Packed-bed biofilm reactor; Sludge reject water.