Nitrogen removal from animal waste treatment water by anammox enrichment

The aim of this work was to examine the applicability of the anaerobic ammonium oxidation (anammox) process to three kinds of low BOD/N ratio wastewaters from animal waste treatment processes in batch mode. A rapid decrease of NO2- and NH4+ was observed during incubation with wastewaters from AS and UASB/trickling filter and their corresponding control artificial wastewaters. This nitrogen removal resulted from the anammox reaction, because the ratio of removed NO2- and NH4+ was close to the theoretical ratio of the anammox reaction. Comparison of the inorganic nitrogen removal rate of the actual wastewater and that of control artificial wastewater showed that these two kinds of wastewater were very suitable for anammox treatment. Incubation with wastewater from RW did not show a clear anammox reaction; however, diluting it by half enabled the reaction, suggesting the presence of an inhibitory factor. This study showed that the three kinds of wastewater from animal waste treatment processes were suitable for anammox treatment.