Abstract
United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) of 2030 emphasizes the wastewater industry should seek more energy-efficient measures for wastewater treatment. Since many wastewater retrofit projects normally do not have the flexibility to adopt most cutting-edge technologies, any retrofit plan that can reduce system energy and resource usages deserves attention. In this study, the advantage of step-feed Anoxic–Oxic (AO) is explored by a model-based approach for a retrofit project treating low C/N influent. Results indicate the success of step-feed AO is to optimize the spatial–temporal match between electron donors and acceptors along the process train, and an optimum influent distribution profile exists for each influent C/N level. However, since influent C/N determines the maximum system attainable N removal, influent step-feed can only improve the usage efficiency of influent bCOD (biologically degradable COD) for denitrification by reducing unnecessary aerobic loss of influent bCOD. Distributing influent too much toward either upstream or downstream will break such balance. Furthermore, by changing the system operation from high DO (dissolved oxygen) mode to low DO mode, the main N removal route can be shifted from full nitrification–denitrification to partial nitrification–denitrification which requires less bCOD and aeration, and thus can further enhance the efficiency of step-feed AO. Although low DO operation mode can have a smaller system operational cost, system robustness is reduced in against influent fluctuations and environment seasonal variations, along with increased N2O emissions. Overall, this study demonstrates the usefulness of step-feed AO for wastewater engineers in responding to the UN SDG 2030 campaign.
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The authors wish to thank the College of Resources and Environment at Huazhong Agricultural University for the partial financial support. The authors also wish to express their gratitude for the technical support from BioWin and the valuable comments from three anonymous reviewers.
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Wu, Z., Du, W., Hou, H. et al. Explore the advantage of step-feed Anoxic–Oxic (AO) process through model-based evaluation of a retrofit project. Int. J. Environ. Sci. Technol. 21, 2781–2792 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13762-023-05087-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13762-023-05087-1