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Updated: Sep 7, 2025

A Novel Bioreactor for High Density Cultivation of Diverse Microbial Communities
Published on: December 25, 2015
Advanced nitrogen removal from real municipal wastewater by multiple coupling nitritation, denitritation and
Chengkun Kao1, Jianwei Li1, Ruitao Gao1
1National Engineering Laboratory for Advanced Municipal Wastewater Treatment and Reuse Technology, Engineering Research Center of Beijing, Beijing University of Technology, Beijing 100124, China.
Abstract:
Achieving advanced nitrogen removal based on anammox for treating mainstream municipal wastewater in a single suspended sludge bioreactor is a challenging research topic. In this study, multiple coupling nitritation, denitritation and endogenous denitritation with anammox (PNA-(E)PDA) was simultaneously achieved in a 10 L step-feed bioreactor, which enhanced stable nitrogen removal. After 223 days of operation, the total nitrogen concentrations of the influent and effluent were 70.7 ± 6.1 and 4.3 ± 1.8 mg/L, respectively, when treating municipal wastewater even at C/N ratio of 2.24 with only 5 h of aerobic time (DO: 0.5-0.8 mg/L). After the evolution of nitritation/anammox to PNA-(E)PDA, the contribution of anammox to nitrogen removal increased to 78.6% and the anammox activity increased from 4.3 ± 0.2 to 15.2 ± 0.7 mg NH4+-N/gVSS/d. qPCR results showed that the abundance of anammox bacteria increased from 4.1 × 109 to 4.5 × 1010 copies/ (g VSS). High-throughput sequencing further revealed that the relative abundance of Candidatus Brocadia, the dominant anammox genus, increased from 0.09 to 0.46%. Based on the strong competitiveness of anammox on nitrite, this novel PNA-(E)PDA process provides a potential strategy for enriching anammox bacteria in municipal wastewater treatment plants.
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