Partial nitritation and o-cresol removal with aerobic granular biomass in a continuous airlift reactor

Abstract

Several chemical industries produce wastewaters containing both, ammonium and phenolic compounds. As an alternative to treat this kind of complex industrial wastewaters, this study presents the simultaneous partial nitritation and o-cresol biodegradation in a continuous airlift reactor using aerobic granular biomass. An aerobic granular sludge was developed in the airlift reactor for treating a high-strength ammonium wastewater containing 950 ± 25 mg N-NH4(+) L(-1). Then, the airlift reactor was bioaugmented with a p-nitrophenol-degrading activated sludge and o-cresol was added progressively to the ammonium feed to achieve 100 mg L(-1). The results showed that stable partial nitritation and full biodegradation of o-cresol were simultaneously maintained obtaining a suitable effluent for a subsequent anammox reactor. Moreover, two o-cresol shock-load events with concentrations of 300 and 1000 mg L(-1) were applied to assess the capabilities of the system. Despite these shock load events, the partial nitritation process was kept stable and o-cresol was totally biodegraded. Fluorescence in situ hybridization technique was used to identify the heterotrophic bacteria related to o-cresol biodegradation and the ammonia oxidising bacteria along the granules.

Simultaneous oxidation of ammonium and cresol isomers in a sequencing batch reactor: physiological and kinetic study

“…Because of their complex chemical composition, these wastewaters represent a great challenge for their disposal and treatment (Silva et al 2011). Actually, there is a growing interest to develop technologies for the biological treatment of effluents containing ammonium and phenolic compounds (Jemaat et al 2013(Jemaat et al , 2014. Phenolic compounds (phenol, cresols, chlorophenols, etc.…”

“…Responsible editor: Gerald Thouand * Anne-Claire Texier texierac@yahoo.fr In the literature, there are various studies on the inhibitory effects of phenolic compounds on nitrification and at the same time, on the metabolic ability of nitrifying consortia for oxidizing these aromatic compounds: phenol (Yamagishi et al 2001;Amor et al 2005;Silva et al 2011), o-cresol (Jemaat et al 2014), p-cresol Beristain-Cardoso et al 2011), 2-chlorophenol (Martínez-Hernández et al 2011;Pérez-Alfaro et al 2013), p-hydroxybenzaldehyde (Téllez-Pérez et al 2013), and p-nitrophenol (Jemaat et al 2013). Most of these studies were focused on the simultaneous elimination of ammonium and a unique phenolic compound and the information on the simultaneous oxidation of mixtures of ammonium and diverse phenolic compounds is still limited, especially in bioreactors.…”

Extracellular polymeric substances govern the development of biofilm and mass transfer of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons for improved biodegradation

“…Bioremediation is widely accepted as a green and promising new technology for the ecological recovery of PAH-contaminated sites (Vaiopoulou et al, 2015). Indeed, the degradation capacity can be enhanced by the inoculation of specialized bacterial isolates for degradation of water-soluble contaminants, such as phenol (Jemaat et al, 2014), in wastewater treatment systems. Whereas, enhanced biodegradation in large scale PAH-contaminated soil sites as a result of inoculation with PAH-degrading bacterial strains has never been demonstrated.…”

Inhibition of the anammox activity by aromatic compounds

“…The application of a two-step granular process to treat high-strength ammonium and aromatic compounds wastewaters has been recently proposed [14][15][16]. In that configuration, the first aerobic granular reactor allows ammonium to be oxidized to nitrite by ammonia-oxidising bacteria and aromatic compounds to be totally biodegraded by specialized heterotrophic biomass [14][15][16].…”

“…In that configuration, the first aerobic granular reactor allows ammonium to be oxidized to nitrite by ammonia-oxidising bacteria and aromatic compounds to be totally biodegraded by specialized heterotrophic biomass [14][15][16]. In this sense, a suitable effluent for a subsequent anammox reactor can be achieved: (i) a nitrite/ammonium ratio close to 1.0 and (ii) no presence of organic matter [14,15]. In this way, the anammox reactor would only receive aromatic compounds, if the aerobic granular reactor is affected by shock-loads or sequentially alternating pollutants events [14,15].…”