Agriculture Waste as Slow Carbon Releasing Source of Mixotrophic Denitrification Process for Treating Low C/N Wastewater

Abstract

Mixotrophic denitrification has showed great potential for treating wastewater with a low C/N ratio. Mixotrophic denitrification is the process combining autotrophic denitrification and heterotrophic denitrification in one system. It can compensate the disadvantage of the both denitrifications. Instead of using sodium acetate and glucose as carbon source for the heterotrophic denitrification, agriculture solid wastes including rice straw (RS), wheat straw (WS), and corncob (CC) were employed in this study to investigate their potential as carbon source for treating low C/N wastewater. The carbon releasing pattern of the three carbon rich materials has been studied as well as their capacity in denitrification. The results showed that the highest denitrification occurred in the corncob system which was 0.34 kg N/(m3·d). Corncob was then selected to combine with sulfur beads to build the mixotrophic denitrification system. The reactor packed with sulfur bead on the top and corncob on the bottom achieved 0.34 kg N/(m3·d) denitrification efficiency, which is higher than that of the reactor packed with completely mixed sulfur bead and corncob. The autotrophic denitrification and heterotrophic denitrification were 42.2% and 57.8%, respectively. The microorganisms in the sulfur layer were Thermomonas, Ferritrophicum, Thiobacillus belonging to autotrophic denitrification bacteria. Kouleothrix and Geothrix were mostly found in the corncob layer, which have the function for fiber hydrolysis and denitrification. The study has provided an insight into agriculture solid waste application and enhancement on denitrification of wastewater treatment.