Biodegradation of tetramethylammonium hydroxide (TMAH) in completely autotrophic nitrogen removal over nitrite (CANON) process

• Biodegradation of TMAH was studied by CANON process in an anoxic upflow bioreactor.
• Effects of TMAH concentration on performance of CANON process were tested.
• A high removal efficiency of nitrogen from wastewater is achieved by CANON process.
• TMAH is almost completely biodegraded in CANON process.
• CANON process is efficient to convert TMAH into nitrogen gas.

This study conducted a completely autotrophic nitrogen removal over nitrite (CANON) process in a continuous anoxic upflow bioreactor to treat synthetic wastewater with TMAH (tetramethylammonium hydroxide) ranging from 200 to 1000 mg/L. The intermediates were analyzed for understanding the metabolic pathway of TMAH biodegradation in CANON process. In addition, 15N-labeled TMAH was used as the substrate in a batch anoxic bioreactor to confirm that TMAH was converted to nitrogen gas in CANON process. The results indicated that TMAH was almost completely biodegraded in CANON system at different influent TMAH concentrations of 200, 500, and 1000 mg/L. The average removal efficiencies of total nitrogen were higher than 90% during the experiments. Trimethylamine (TMA) and methylamine (MA) were found to be the main biodegradation intermediates of TMAH in CANON process. The production of nitrogen gas with 15N-labeled during the batch anaerobic bioreactor indicated that CANON process successfully converted TMAH into nitrogen gas.