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Pathways regulating nitrogen removal in constructed ditch wetlands: effects of different inflow ratios and artificial aeration

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Abstract

Constructed ditch wetland (CDW) is a combination of idle ditch and constructed wetland, which is typically used in rural areas to remove pollutants from domestic wastewater. However, its low total nitrogen (TN) removal remains a pressing issue. To enhance total nitrogen removal, an approach of supplying water at two locations in the CDW at different influent flow ratios, combined with artificial aeration, was proposed to adjust carbon and oxygen distribution in the system. The highest average TN removal was achieved at low influent concentration (CDW4; influent flow ratio 1:2). The removal of TN in winter and spring were 58.93 and 83.26%, respectively. The distribution of carbon sources in the back zone enhanced denitrification. Of the high influent concentration treatments, CDW2 (2:1) achieved 16.97% more TN removal on average compared with CDW1 (3:0), after extra artificial aeration was applied in the front zone. However, nitrification was a limiting step in the system, which became the primary problem preventing pollutant purification. Moreover, nitrifying bacteria abundance was negatively correlated to the influent flow ratio and autotrophic denitrifying bacterial abundance was positively correlated to the influent flow ratios.

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Acknowledgments

This work was financially supported by the Science and Technology Project of Zhejiang Province (No. 2015C03016), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 51678356), the Program for Chinese National Key Projects of Water Pollution Control and Reclamation (2017ZX07205003) and the Science Foundation for Youths of Zhejiang Province (LQ19E080018).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, 200240, China

    Yuhui Ma & Shengbing He

  2. School of Life and Environmental Science, Wenzhou University, Wenzhou, 325000, China

    Peiru Zheng, Wanqing Dai, Xiangyong Zheng & Min Zhao

  3. Shanghai Institute of Pollution Control and Ecological Security, Shanghai, 200092, China

    Shengbing He

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  1. Yuhui Ma
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  6. Min Zhao
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Correspondence to Xiangyong Zheng or Shengbing He.

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Ma, Y., Zheng, P., Dai, W. et al. Pathways regulating nitrogen removal in constructed ditch wetlands: effects of different inflow ratios and artificial aeration. Environ Sci Pollut Res 27, 42571–42581 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-020-10224-1

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