Start-up Strategies for Anaerobic Ammonia Oxidation (Anammox) in In-Situ Nitrogen Removal from Polluted Groundwater in Rare Earth Mining Areas

Abstract

The tremendous input of ammonium and rare earth element (REE) ions released by the enormous consumption of (NH4)2SO4 in in situ leaching for ion-adsorption RE mining caused serious ground and surface water contamination. Anaerobic ammonium oxidation (anammox) was a sustainable in situ technology that can reduce this nitrogen pollution. In this research, in situ, semi in situ, and ex situ method of inoculation that included low-concentration (0.02 mg·L−1) and high-concentration (0.10 mg·L−1) lanthanum (La)(III) were adopted to explore effective start-up strategies for starting up anammox reactors seeded with activated sludge and anammox sludge. The reactors were refrigerated for 30 days at 4 °C to investigate the effects of La(III) during a period of low-temperature. The results showed that the in situ and semi in situ enrichment strategies with the addition of La(III) at a low-concentration La(III) addition (0.02 mg·L−1) reduced the length of time required to reactivate the sludge until it reached a state of stable anammox activity and high nitrogen removal efficiency by 60–71 days. The addition of La(III) promoted the formation of sludge floc with a compact structure that enabled it to resist the adverse effects of low temperature and so to maintain a high abundance of AnAOB and microbacterial community diversity of sludge during refrigeration period. The addition of La(III) at a high concentration caused the cellular percentage of AnAOB to decrease from 54.60 ± 6.19% to 17.35 ± 6.69% during the enrichment and reduced nitrogen removal efficiency to an unrecoverable level to post-refrigeration.