Seasonal Ammonia Removal Performance by Biofilm in a Water Treatment Plant

WAI KHIN KHIN, LI QINTONG, ODANO TAKAHIRO, UTSUMI MOTOO

doi:10.2521/jswtb.57.67

<p> Nitrogen compounds, represented by ammonia, are one of the most critical pollutants in water bodies because of their role in eutrophication and their toxicity to aquatic organisms. Recently, the biological treatment of ammonia in water resources has been rapidly improved and being applied to numerous water treatment plants, as more and more knowledge has been accumulating on microbial participation of ammonia-utilizing organisms. However, most of the researches on biological removal of ammonia focused on waste water treatment plants (WWTPs) or pilot/laboratory water treatment reactors, where ammonia concentration in the influent waters is usually from 4 to several hundreds even thousands of mg N/L. By far, knowledge of ammonia removal performance with low ammonia load (especially when less than 2.0 mg N/L), such as in drinking water treatment plants (DWTPs), is still limited. Thus in this research, we sampled biofilm from a practical biological DWTP and carried out ammonia removal tests in lab with low ammonia inflow (1.0 mg/L) under dark condition. Our results showed that ammonia can be effectively removed within 2-day incubation when temperature was as low as 11℃, while no significant ammonia removal could be confirmed at 7℃. Molecular analysis showed that canonical ammonia oxidizers (AOA and beta-AOB) may not be responsible for the observed ammonia abatement in the sampled DWTP as well as in laboratory incubation vials. Instead, microbial ammonia assimilation or comammox process may be the probable ammonia removal pathway in low ammonia conditions such as DWTPs.</p>

Seasonal Ammonia Removal Performance by Biofilm in a Water Treatment Plant

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