Nitrogen removal from high ammonia and phosphorus streams using an ecologically friendly process: the Annamox process

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Developing clean technologies which provide solutions to issues of climate change, clean air and water quality are global priorities in the environmental engineering sector. As part of Canada's national effort to reduce the production of greenhouse gas through developing energy efficient clean technologies, this proposal is aimed at developing a novel and cost effective biological treatment system for removing toxic ammonia from ammonia rich wastewater. This research and development aimed at implementing a different type of bacteria into a novel bioreactor. This bacterium, called Anammox bacterium, is able to convert ammonia to nitrogen gas under anaerobic condition. The Anammox bacteria provide a cost-effective and sustainable way of removing ammonium from high ammonia wastewaters. Compared to conventional nitrification and denitrification with methanol, the operational costs and CO2 emission are reduced up to 90 %. During the course of proposed research a pilot scale sequencing batch reactor (SBR) will be constructed and installed at J.A.M.E.S wastewater treatment plant in Abbottsford, BC. The systems will operated and optimized for treating the centrate produced at the J.A.M.E.S plant. A detailed kinetics study on Anammox under varying environmental conditions will be conducted. The kinetics of Anammox reaction will be studied at varying ammonia to nitrite ratio, temperature and pH using the biomass produced by SBR. Both kinetics and reactor performance data will provide the required information for the next phase of research that will be focused on meddling. GPS-X computer modeling software will be used to study and model the performance of the treatment plant in terms of nitrogen removal and greenhouse gas emissions if Anammox were to be used in full scale. The modeling results will provide the information necessary to compare the Anammox to current biological and physiochemical processes used for ammonia removal from centrate. The proposed research offers a simple and practical solution to nitrogen removal and therefore has a great potential to be implemented at wastewater treatment plants.