DEAMOX--new biological nitrogen removal process based on anaerobic ammonia oxidation coupled to sulphide-driven conversion of nitrate into nitrite

This paper reports about the successful laboratory testing of a new nitrogen removal process called DEAMOX (DEnitrifying AMmonium OXidation) for treatment of typical strong nitrogenous wastewater such as baker's yeast effluent. The concept of this process combines the recently discovered anammox (anaerobic ammonium oxidation) reaction with autotrophic denitrifying conditions using sulphide as an electron donor for the production of nitrite from nitrate within an anaerobic biofilm. To generate sulphide and ammonia, a Upflow Anaerobic Sludge Bed (UASB) reactor was used as a pre-treatment step. The UASB effluent was split and partially fed to a nitrifying reactor (to generate nitrate) and the remaining part was directly fed to the DEAMOX reactor where this stream was mixed with the nitrified effluent. Stable process performance and volumetric nitrogen loading rates of the DEAMOX reactor well above 1000 mgN/l/d with total nitrogen removal efficiencies of around 90% were obtained after long-term (410 days) optimisation of the process. Important prerequisites for this performance are appropriate influent ratios of the key species fed to the DEAMOX reactor, namely influent N-NO(x)/N-NH(4) ratios >1.2 (stoichiometry of the anammox reaction) and influent S-H(2)S/N-NO(3) ratios >0.57 mgS/mgN (stoichiometry of the sulphide-driven denitrification of nitrate to nitrite). The paper further describes some characteristics of the DEAMOX sludge as well as the preliminary results of its microbiological characterisation.