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Updated: Dec 12, 2025

A Novel Bioreactor for High Density Cultivation of Diverse Microbial Communities
Published on: December 25, 2015
Improving Efficiency and Stability of Anammox through Sequentially Coupling Nitritation and Denitritation in a
Jialin Li1, Yongzhen Peng1, Liang Zhang1
1National Engineering Laboratory for Advanced Municipal Wastewater Treatment and Reuse Technology, Key Laboratory of Beijing for Water Quality Science and Water Environment Recovery Engineering, Beijing University of Technology, Beijing 100124, China.
Abstract:
This study developed an innovative process for the treatment of low-ammonium wastewater in a single-stage bioreactor over 250 days. Partial nitritation-anammox and partial denitritation-anammox (PN/A-PDN/A) processes were combined under aerobic/anoxic operation, and a high nitrogen removal efficiency (94.6%) was obtained at a nitrogen removal rate of 0.54 kg N m-3 d-1 and a chemical oxygen demand to total inorganic nitrogen (COD/TIN) ratio of 0.28. Mass balance analysis identified anammox as the dominant nitrogen removal pathway, achieving 88.3% nitrogen loss. The abundance of anammox bacteria and their bioactivity rapidly increased and were effectively maintained, as indicated by qPCR and bioactivity tests. The PN/A-PDN/A process provided two pathways of nitrite production for anammox, which favored the enrichment of anammox bacteria and stable processing. In addition, the enrichment of anammox bacteria was promoted by selective floc discharge since anammox bacteria are mainly located in granules (relative abundance of 29.64 ± 7.89%). Competitive organisms (including heterotrophic bacteria and nitrite oxidizing bacteria), enriched in flocs, were washed out. Overall, these findings confirmed anammox, sequentially combined with PN and PDN via aerobic/anoxic strategy, as a promising alternative for mainstream anammox.
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