Increasing nitrogen and organic matter removal from swine manure digestate by including pre-denitrification and recirculation in single-stage partial nitritation/anammox.

A novel two-stage process comprising pre-denitrification and single-stage partial nitritation/anammox was developed to treat swine manure digestate with a constant nitrogen loading rate of 1.0 gN/L/d. As the influent NH-N concentration increased from 500 to 1500 mg/L, a nitrogen removal efficiency of 88 %-96 % and 5-day biochemical oxygen demand removal efficiency of 93 %-97 % were achieved. Owing to the high influent chemical oxygen demand (COD)/nitrates and nitrites (NO) ratio of 8.2-9.2 and high COD utilization of denitrifying bacteria (DB), the NO-N and NO-N removal efficiencies in the denitrification reactor reached 96 %-99 % and 97 %-99 %, respectively. The contribution of anammox bacteria to nitrogen removal was 70.9 %-84.3 %, whereas that of DB was 11.7 %-18.3 %. The contributions of DB and ordinary heterotrophic organisms to COD removal were 19.5 %-49.3 % and 17.9 %-39 %, respectively. This study will help guide the anammox process in swine wastewater treatment.