Intensified nitrogen removal by endogenous denitrification in a full-scale municipal wastewater treatment plant

In this study, for the first time, endogenous denitrification (ED) was enhanced in a practical anaerobic-anoxic-oxic-[post-anoxic]-[post-oxic] (AAO-AO) process, contributing to a remarkable increase in the nitrogen removal efficiency (NRE). The long-term operation (203 days) result showed that the NRE was improved by 7% compared to the theoretical maximum NRE (68-70%) of AAO processes, with the effluent total nitrogen (TN) decreasing from 13.7 (1 d) to 6.1 mg/L (203 d). Approximately 99.4% of the influent COD was transformed to poly-β-hydroxyalkanoates (PHAs) in the anaerobic zone. The synthesized PHAs were consumed in the following zones and the secondary sedimentation tank accompanied by over 32.5% N-loss, indicating that the ED process could be responsible for the enhanced NRE. 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing results further confirmed that denitrifying glycogen-accumulating organisms, which are capable of ED, were enriched with the relative abundance of 2.10%. Our findings provide a novel cost- and energy-efficient strategy to improve nitrogen removal without external carbon additions but by enhancing ED performance.