Pilot Scale Application of Partial Nitritation Anammox and Partial Denitrification Anammox Treating Industrial Fertilizer Waste with High Ammonia and Nitrate

Industries facing increasingly stringent discharge limits are challenged with limitations in treatment technology that reliably and efficiently treat high strength wastewater. A manufacturer of liquid fertilizer produces a waste stream that is very laden with total inorganic nitrogen (TIN), ammonium (NH4), nitrite (NO2), and nitrate (NO3) – which is the main component of the wastewater that is regulated. Conventional approaches to removing high concentrations of inorganic nitrogen from wastewater are very costly and inefficient with resources like energy, chemicals, and land footprint. A treatability study was conducted on industrial wastewater to determine if more efficient biological methods can be used in a treatment design to meet regulatory requirements. The technology utilized in this study involves a novel approach using anaerobic ammonium oxidizing (anammox) bacteria in two shortcut nitrogen removal methods that are more cost effective than conventional nitrification-denitrification. The first method, partial nitritation anammox (PNA) is very effective at removing high strength NH4 from wastewater. Although PNA is effective in removing NH4, it does not remove NO3, which is why the second method of shortcut removal incorporated in this study is partial denitrification anammox (PdNA), which is effective at removing NO3 and NH3 simultaneously. The objective of this study is to determine if PNA and PdNA are effective treatment methods for this wastewater, and to optimize a process that incorporates this technology in a simple, robust, and efficient manner. The hypothesis was that utilizing the two shortcut methods in a pilot scale design, an effluent quality of TIN less than 5 mgN/L is achievable using biological treatment. Phase one of this work proved the concept of PNA and PdNA being viable treatment options for this waste, with a two-stage configuration of a PNA moving bed biofilm reactor (MBBR) followed by a PdNA MBBR reliably removing 92.1%±3.6% of influent TIN. Although proof of concept was achieved in phase I, this configuration had shortcomings when it came to reliability, chemical efficiency, and practicality. Phase two and three of this study pursued the second objective of optimizing this process by developing a single stage MBBR with intermittent aeration in which the aerobic cycle conducted a PNA process, and the anoxic cycle conducted a PdNA process with the added benefit of increasing or decreasing the air on versus air off time to adjust for varying ammonium versus NOx (AvN). Phase three confirmed the hypothesis that a PNA and PdNA process could treat this waste to an effluent quality of less than 5 mg TIN/L by adding a full nitrification (FN) and full denitrification (FdN) polishing MBBR that treated final effluent and increased the TIN removal efficiency to 99.4%±0.8%.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Science

Level thesis:degree_level

masters

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Civil Engineering

Department dc:contributor.department

Civil and Environmental Engineering

Grantor dc:publisher

Virginia Tech

Year dc:date.issued

2025

Author dc:creator

• Wooten, Joseph Sean

Chairs dc:contributor.committeechair

• Pruden, Amy
• Bott, Charles B.

Committee member dc:contributor.committeemember

• Knocke, William R.

• Anammox
• Industrial Wastewater

Statement dc:rights

• In Copyright

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Language dc:language.iso

en

Dc Identifier Other

vt_gsexam:43752

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/135399