Nitrogen removal from municipal wastewater by mainstream Partial Nitritation/Anammox process

Abstract: Mainstream Partial Nitritation/Anammox, also known as Mainstream Deammonification, is a promising technology for future wastewater purification that aims to remove nitrogen from wastewater in order to prevent the eutrophication. It is less costly than the traditional nitrification/denitrification process and it heads towards the direction of converting the WWTPs from energy consuming into energy producing facilities.   This Master’s thesis is based on a study regarding the nitrogen removal from mainstream wastewater. It was conducted at Hammarby Sjöstadsverk that is a research facility in the area of the Henriksdal Waste Wastewater Treatment Plant in Stockholm. Three parts of the study were developed. The main one had the purpose to evaluate the process performances of a biological pilot-scale IFAS reactor used for Mainstream Deammonification that was operated from October 2017 to March 2018. This evaluation was addressed to comprehend how the pilot-scale reactor works at different operational conditions. The remaining studies analysed the progress of the pilot-scale reactor in relation to different factors and to the settling properties of the activated sludge used in the process.   It was found that the process performances improved by changing the aeration pattern from 40 to 50 minutes for non-aeration time and from 20 to 10 minutes for aeration time and by increasing the dissolved oxygen set-point from 0.6 to 1.0 mg/L. The enhancement of the performances consisted in an inhibition of nitrite oxidizing bacteria and rise of the total nitrogen removal efficiency. In addition, anammox biofilm was observed to grow on the carriers and it was observed that the activated sludge did not have good settling properties.