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A loading rate switch strategy for stable nitritation in mainstream municipal wastewater

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Abstract

Implementation of biological ammonia-to-nitrite conversion (nitritation) is crucial to more sustainable municipal wastewater treatment. However, achieving stable nitritation, especially in low-temperature mainstream municipal wastewater, remains a global challenge. Here we develop a loading rate switch strategy to enable ultrastable nitritation in a pilot-scale (6.5 m³) reactor treating real mainstream municipal wastewater. This strategy consists of a stage with high organic loading rate to decrease both ammonia-oxidizing bacteria and nitrite-oxidizing bacteria amounts and a stage in which the organic loading rate sharply decreases to enhance ammonia-oxidizing bacteria and promote their bioactivity while containing nitrite-oxidizing bacteria. By implementing this strategy, nitritation initiated within 7 days and a high nitrite accumulation ratio of ~98.1% was maintained for >450 days, even at temperature as low as 5.9 °C. During the long-term operation, nitrite-oxidizing bacteria were below the detection level, whereas ammonia-oxidizing bacteria remained abundant. Moreover, the average concentrations of effluent ammonium and nitrite were kept at 8.3 and 13.8 mg N l−1, respectively, favouring further nitrogen removal by anammox process, an inherently low-carbon and low-energy process. Overall, this work presents a viable and environmentally friendly strategy for nitrogen removal, paving the way to sustainable sewage management.

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Fig. 1: Schematic diagram and control logics of the system.
Fig. 2: Long-term performance of the pilot-scale bioreactor.
Fig. 3: The results of qPCR and batch tests.
Fig. 4: Batch tests under different process conditions.
Fig. 5: High-throughput sequencing analysis at the genus level.
Fig. 6: Advantages and application prospects of the fresh start concept-based nitritation strategy.

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Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author. The raw sequence data from this study have been archived in NCBI Sequence Read Archive (SRA) with the project accession number of PRJNA905363.

Code availability

All computer codes generated during this study are available from the corresponding authors.

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Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grants 52122005 and 52131004), the National Key Research and Development Programme (2021YFC3200601 and 2021YFC3200605), R&D Program of Beijing Municipal Education Commission (grant KM202210005014) and Higher Education Discipline Innovation Project (111 project, D16003).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Engineering Laboratory for Advanced Municipal Wastewater Treatment and Reuse Technology, Engineering Research Center of Beijing, Beijing University of Technology, Beijing, PR China

    Zihao Wang, Liang Zhang, Wei Zeng, Jialin Li, Qiong Zhang, Xiyao Li & Yongzhen Peng

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  1. Zihao Wang
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  2. Liang Zhang
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  3. Wei Zeng
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  4. Jialin Li
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  5. Qiong Zhang
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  6. Xiyao Li
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  7. Yongzhen Peng
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Contributions

Z.W., L.Z., W.Z. and Y.P. planned the project and provided analysis design. Z.W., Q.Z., X.L. and Y.P. participated in the experimental work. Z.W., L.Z. and Y.P. wrote the paper. J.L. polished the paper.

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Correspondence to Liang Zhang.

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Nature Sustainability thanks Zheng Min and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary Tables 1–4, Figs. 1–4 and Methods.

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Wang, Z., Zhang, L., Zeng, W. et al. A loading rate switch strategy for stable nitritation in mainstream municipal wastewater. Nat Sustain 7, 305–314 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-024-01276-z

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