Comparative performance of air-lift partial nitritation processes with attached growth and suspended growth without biomass retention

Partial nitritation is an essential first step in anaerobic ammonium oxidation. This study compared the performance of air-lift partial nitritation reactors with attached growth (AG) and suspended growth (SG) without biomass retention using ammonium-rich recirculated liquor produced from the dewatering of anaerobically digested sludge. The steady-state results showed that the AG can effectively retain ammonium-oxidizing bacteria (AOB) with high activity and allow minimizing biomass discharge (approximate to 10mg volatile suspended solids/L) in the effluent. The nitrogen loading (based on the total reactor volume) satisfying the effluent characteristics could be suggested to be 0.42g N/L/d for the SG, and 0.76g N/L/d for the AG, respectively. Compared with the SG, the AG achieved a higher ammonium loading rate (approximate to 1.8 times), maximal ammonium oxidation activity (48mg N/L-h based on liquid-phase volume) under a short hydraulic retention time (HRT) and a long solids retention time (SRT>80 d). The overall performance confirmed that AG is a promising configuration for partial nitritation in terms of the process stability, maximization of the AOB activity and minimization of the effluent biomass under a short HRT and high nitrogen loading rate.