Unprecedented development of anammox in presence of organic carbon using seed biomass from a tannery Common Effluent Treatment Plant (CETP)

• Anammox enriched using seed biomass from a tannery CETP in simple SBR operation.
• Nitrogen removal performance of anammox increased with enrichment.
• Anammox tolerated organic carbon available by cell lyses.
• Competing co-existence of anammox and denitrification.
• Anaerobic ammonia removal in presence of organic carbon by an unknown mechanism.

This work describes development of a microbial consortium dominant in anammox in presence of organic carbon (available through cell lyses) by employing simple sequencing batch operation in 23 cycles exceeding 400 days. Seed biomass from a tannery Common Effluent Treatment Plant (CETP) was enriched for anammox and attained maximum removals of NH4-N (95%) and NO2-N (98%). The anammox was confirmed by nitrogen mass balance in a controlled batch experiment and by DNA extraction-PCR-agarose gel electrophoresis. The effective anammox followed first order reaction kinetics with rate constant of 0.0141/h and half-saturation constant of 10.6 mg/L. Evidence for coexistence of denitrification (99% NO2-N removal) and anammox (57.8% NH4-N removal) was demonstrated. This study opens-up possible application of microbial consortium dominant in anammox for simultaneous removal of ammonia and organic carbon from wastewaters.