Simultaneous nitrogen and organic carbon removal in aerobic granular sludge reactors operated with high dissolved oxygen concentration

Simultaneous nitrification and denitrification (SND) together with organic removal in granules is usually carried out without Dissolved Oxygen (DO) concentration control, at “low DO” (with a DO < 30-50% of the saturation value, about 3-4 mg/L) to promote anoxic conditions within the aggregates. These conditions can sometimes be in detrimental of the stability of the granules itself due to a lack of shear force. In this work, the authors achieved SND without oxygen control with big sized granules. More specifically, the paper presents a experimentation focused on the analysis of two Sequencing Batch Reactors (SBRs), in bench scale, working with different aerobic sludge granules, in terms of granule size, and high DO concentration, (with concentration varying from anoxic conditions, about DO ∼0 mg/L, to values close to those of saturation, >7-8 mg/L, during feast and famine conditions respectively). In particular, different strategies of cultivation and several organic and nitrogen loading rate have been applied, in order to evaluate the efficiencies in SND process without dissolved oxygen control. The results show that, even under conditions of high DO concentration, nitrogen and organic matter can be simultaneously removed, with efficiency >90%. Nevertheless, the biological conditions in the inner layer of the granule may change significantly between small and big granules, during the feast and famine periods. From point of view of granule stability, it is also interesting that with a particle size greater than 1.5 mm, after the cultivation start-up, the granules are presented stable for a long period (about 100 days) and, despite the variations of operational conditions, the granules breaking was always negligible.