Removal of ammonium-N from ammonium-rich sewage using an immobilized Bacillus subtilis AYC bioreactor system

A self-design bioreactor system employing a fixed bed operation process with immobilized Bacillus subtilis AYC beads for NH4+-N removal from slightly polluted water was proposed. Polyvinyl alcohol and Na-alginate were used as a gel matrix to entrap Bacillus subtilis AYC to form the immobilized beads. The NH4+-N removal process was studied in a intermittent operation mode to examine the start-up and steady state behaviors of the immobilized AYC in the reactor. The results indicated that the reactor was in the start-up state during the first week. NH4+-N began to be steadily removal since the second week, and the nitrogen removal rate was between 84.61% and 96.19% when the hydraulic retention time (HRT) was 30 min. To apply Bacillus subtilis AYC to develop a practical nitrogen removal system and further understand its nitrogen removal ability, the bioreactor was continuously operated under different experimental perameters. The results showed that under the optimum conditions of an HRT of 20 min and DO of 3.77–5.80 mg/L, the NH4+-N removal rate reached 99.55%. The NH4+-N removal rate increased as the C/N ratio increased. However, a high C/N may cause a high residual carbon level in the effluent, therefore, the most suitable C/N ratio was 10. In addition, the results showed that the bioreactor system could remove many types of nitrogen such as NH4+-N, NO3−-N and organic-N, and had a good performance for inorganic nitrogen removal from sewage.