Abstract
The vegetation-activated sludge process (V-ASP) has been proved to be an environment-friendly decentralized wastewater treatment system with extra esthetic function and less footprint. However, the effects of low temperature on the treatment performance of V-ASP and related improvement methods are rarely investigated, up to now. In this work, the effect of low temperature on nitrification in V-ASP was comprehensively investigated from overall nitrification performance, substrate utilization kinetics, functional enzymatic activities, and microbial community structure shift by comparison with conventional ASP. Bio-augmentation methods in terms of single-time nitrifier-enriched biomass dosage were employed to improve nitrification efficiency in bench- and full-scale systems. The experiment results demonstrated that the NH4 +–N removal efficiency in V-ASP system decreased when the operational temperature decreased from 30 to 15 °C, and the decreasing extent was rather smaller compared to ASP, as well as ammonium and nitrite oxidation rates and enzymatic activities, which indicated the V-ASP system possesses high resistance to low temperature. With direct dosage of 1.6 mg nitrifier/gSS sludge, the nitrification efficiency in V-ASP was enhanced dramatically from below 50% to above 90%, implying that bio-augmentation was effective for V-ASP whose enzymatic activities and microbial communities were both also improved. The feasibility and effectiveness of bio-augmentation was further confirmed in a full-scale V-ASP system after a long-term experiment which is instructive for the practical application.
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This research was supported by grants 2012ZX07313001-008 from the National Water Pollutant Control and Treatment Project Funding, grants No. 51678183 and 51408149 from the National Natural Science Foundation of China, and grant No. JCYJ20160406162038258 from Shenzhen Science and Technology Funding.
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Yuan, J., Dong, W., Sun, F. et al. Low temperature effects on nitrification and nitrifier community structure in V-ASP for decentralized wastewater treatment and its improvement by bio-augmentation. Environ Sci Pollut Res 25, 6584–6595 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-017-0927-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-017-0927-9