In this study, conventional and novel gas sparging regimes have been evaluated for a municipal wastewater granular anaerobic MBR to identify how best to achieve high sustainable fluxes whilst simultaneously conserving energy demand. Using continuous gas sparging in combination with continuous filtration, flux was strongly dependent upon shear rate, which imposed a considerable energy demand. Intermittent gas sparging was subsequently evaluated to reduce energy demand whilst delivering an analogous shear rate. For a flux of 5 L m-2 h-1 , a fouling rate below 1 mbar h-1 was sustained with low gas sparging frequency and gas sparging rates. However, to sustain low fouling rates for fluxes above 10 L m-2 h-1 , a gas sparging frequency of 50 % (i.e. 10 s on/10 s off) and an increase in gas sparging rate is needed, indicating the importance of shear rate and gas sparging frequency. An alternative gas sparging regime was subsequently tested in which filtration was conducted without gas sparging, followed by membrane relaxation for a short period coupled with gas sparging, to create a pseudo dead-end filtration cycle. Fouling characterisation evidenced considerable cake fouling rates of 200-250 mbar h-1 within each filtration cycle. However, long term fouling transient analysis demonstrated low residual fouling resistance, suggesting the cake formed during filtration was almost completely reversible, despite operating at a flux of 15 L m-2 h-1 , which was equivalent or higher than the critical flux of the suspension. It is therefore asserted that by operating filtration in the absence of shear, fouling is less dependent upon the preferential migration of the submicron particle fraction and is instead governed by the compressibility of the heterogeneous cake formed, which enables higher operational fluxes to be achieved. Comparison of energy demand for the three gas sparging regimes to the energy recovered from municipal wastewater AnMBR demonstrated that only by using dead-end filtration can energy neutral wastewater treatment be realised which is the ultimate ambition for the technology.
NO emission was studied in a continuous process via nitrite for real urban wastewater treatment. The relationship between the gaseous forms and the liquid kinetic rates of nitritation and denitritation was investigated. NO mass load and global nitrogen mass balance were quantified. The emission factor of the NO (gNO/kg mixed liquor volatile suspended solids [MLVSS]/d) was calculated. Incrementing the nitritation rate permits the reduction of NO emission by 78%. Instead, an NO decrease of 93% was observed by increasing the denitritation velocity. The determinant role of the anoxic phase in the production of dinitrogen oxide was identified. The contribution of NO emission from the anoxic phase (4.8 gNO-N/kgMLVSS/d) was enhanced under limiting denitritation conditions (kd lower than 0.08 kgNOx-N/kgMLVSS/d). NO production increased by five times with the accumulation of nitrites in the solution up to 200 mg/L. Strict correlation between free ammonia concentration and nitritation rate was found as a possible signal of further ammonia oxidizing bacteria selection.
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