Effective recovery of the nitritation process through hydrogen peroxide

This study successfully achieved stable nitritation by adding hydrogen peroxide (H₂O₂) to the nitrification sludge whose nitritation stability had been destroyed. The batch experiment demonstrated that, the activity of ammonia-oxidizing bacteria (AOB) was restored more rapidly than that of nitrite oxidizing bacteria (NOB) after the addition of H₂O₂, thereby selectively promoting AOB enrichment and NOB washout. When the H₂O₂ concentration was 6.25 mg/L, the NOB activity was significantly reduced and the nitrite accumulation rate (NAR) was more than 95% after 18 cycles of nitrifying sludge restoration. As a result, H₂O₂ treatment enabled a nitrifying reactor to recover stable nitritation performance via H₂O₂ treatment, with the NAR and ammonia removal efficiency (ARE) both exceeding 90%. High-throughput sequencing analysis revealed that H₂O₂ treatment was successful in restoring nitritation, as the relative abundance of Nitrosomonas in the nitrifying reactor increased from 6.43% to 41.97%, and that of Nitrolancea decreased from 17.34% to 2.37%. Recovering nitritation by H₂O₂ inhibition is a low operational cost, high efficiency, and non-secondary pollution nitritation performance stabilization method. By leveraging the varying inhibition degrees of H₂O₂ on AOB and NOB, stable nitrification can be efficiently restored at a low cost and without causing secondary pollution.