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The effect and biological mechanism of granular sludge size on performance of autotrophic nitrogen removal system

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Abstract

The autotrophic process for nitrogen removal has attracted worldwide attention in the field of wastewater treatment, and the performance of this process is greatly influenced by the size of granular sludge particles present in the system. In this work, the granular sludge was divided into three groups, i.e. large size (> 1.2 mm), medium size (0.6–1.2 mm) and small size (< 0.6 mm). The medium granular sludge was observed to dominate at high volumetric nitrogen loading rates, while offering strong support for good performance. Its indispensable contribution was found to originate from improved settling velocity (0.84 ± 0.10 cm/s), high SOUR-A (specific oxygen uptake rate for ammonia oxidizing bacteria, 25.93 mg O2/g MLVSS/h), low SOUR-N (specific oxygen uptake rate for nitrite oxidizing bacteria, 3.39 mg O2/g MLVSS/h), and a reasonable microbial spatial distribution.

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Acknowledgements

Financial supports of this work by National Natural Science Foundation of China (U1609214;51408570), Major Projects for Science and Technology Development of Zhejiang Province, China (2015C02037), Zhejiang Science and Technology Program key projects, China (2017C03010), and the Research Fund of Tianjin Key Laboratory of Aquatic Science and Technology are greatly appreciated.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Environmental Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310058, China

    Xing Ya-juan, Zheng Ping, Wang Ru & He Zhan-fei

  2. Key Laboratory of Recycling and Eco-treatment of Waste Biomass of Zhejiang Province, Zhejiang University of Science and Technology, Hangzhou, 310023, China

    Xing Ya-juan

  3. Key Laboratory of Marine Environment and Ecology, Ministry of Education, Ocean University of China, Qingdao, 266100, China

    Ji Jun-yuan

  4. Laboratory of Development and Application of Rural Renewable Energy, Ministry of Agriculture, Biogas Institute of Ministry of Agriculture, Chengdu, 610041, China

    Wang Lan

  5. Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Gujrat, Gujrat, 50700, Pakistan

    Ghulam Abbas

  6. Resources and Environment Department, Binzhou University, Binzhou, 256600, China

    Jiqiang Zhang

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  1. Xing Ya-juan
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  2. Ji Jun-yuan
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  3. Zheng Ping
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  4. Wang Lan
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  5. Ghulam Abbas
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  6. Jiqiang Zhang
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  7. Wang Ru
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  8. He Zhan-fei
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Correspondence to Ji Jun-yuan or Zheng Ping.

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Ya-juan, X., Jun-yuan, J., Ping, Z. et al. The effect and biological mechanism of granular sludge size on performance of autotrophic nitrogen removal system. Biodegradation 29, 339–347 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10532-018-9836-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10532-018-9836-y

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