Application and kinetic evaluation of upflow anaerobic biofilm reactor for nitrogen removal from wastewater by Anammox process

The lab-scale upflow anaerobic biofilm reactor was successfully operated for the treatment of synthetic wastewater with high nitrogen load by Anammox (anaerobic ammonium oxidation) process. During the entire period of operation, the reactor temperature was kept at 35±1°C. The operational strategy consisted of both increasing the ammonium and nitrite concentrations from 60 to 700mgN/L and from 80 to 920 mgN/L, respectively and decreasing the hydraulic retention time from 24 to 6 h, at each step. The highest achieved removal efficiency of ammonium and nitrite were 91 and 93%, respectively. Consequently, due to their acceptable performance for nitrogen removal in previous researches, modified Stover-Kincannon and Grau second-order models were used in this study. According to the experiment results, the model validity testing showed that the Stover-Kincannon model was a little more appropriate for the description of nitrogen removal in the reactor, even though both models gave high correlation coefficients (R(2)=0.999).