Abstract
Constructed wetlands (CWs) can be used for tertiary treatment of wastewater; however, carbon source shortages limit denitrification. We studied the effect of algae addition as an external carbon source in CWs and found that the nitrogen removal efficiency of CWs is highly dependent on the algae dosage. Optimal nitrogen removal percentage (80.5%) can be achieved by adding 81.1 mg·L−1 dry weight algae to the influent when the chemical oxygen demand/nitrogen (COD/N) ratio reaches 5.3. Longitudinal changes in the nitrogen concentrations, organic matter concentrations, and nitrogen functional genes were also analyzed. The algae addition strengthened the anoxic environment, boosted the volatile fatty acid concentrations, and improved the ratio of nitrite reductase gene (nirS) and copper-containing nitrite reductase (nirK)/16S rRNA, as well as the ratio of nitrate reductase gene (narG)/16S rRNA, thereby expanding the active space for denitrification. The addition of algae could potentially provide enough carbon to enhance denitrification during treatment of wastewater with a low COD/N ratio.
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Data availability
The datasets generated and/or analyzed during the current study are available in the figshare repository, https://figshare.com/articles/dataset/Untitled_Item/14423687
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Acknowledgements
The authors thank Shan Huang for previous experiments and Yurui Li, Jiayin Guo, and Xiangyu Xu for experiment assistance.
Funding
This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [grant numbers 51578395, 51778455] and National Major Program of Science and Technology of China [grant number 2017ZX07603-003].
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SPC: Conceptualization, Supervision, Writing—review and editing. JH: Methodology, Data curation, Investigation, Visualization, Writing—original draft. FZ: Methodology, Formal analysis, Writing—review and editing. JW: Funding acquisition, Formal analysis, Writing—review and editing. SLY: Methodology, Formal analysis, Writing—review
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Cheng, ., Huai, J., Zhong, F. et al. Enhancing denitrification in constructed wetland with algae addition. Environ Sci Pollut Res 29, 1949–1960 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-15755-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-15755-9