The sludge digester effluent taken from a full scale municipal wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) in Istanbul, Turkey, was successfully deammonified using a laboratory scale two-stage partial nitritation (PN)/Anammox (A) process and a maximum nitrogen removal rate of 1.02 kg N/m3/d was achieved. In the PN reactor, 56.8 ± 4% of the influent NH4-N was oxidized to NO2-N and the effluent nitrate concentration was kept below 1 mg/L with 0.5–0.7 mg/L of dissolved oxygen and pH of 7.12 ± 12 at 24 ± 4°C. The effluent of the PN reactor was fed to an upflow packed bed Anammox reactor where high removal efficiency was achieved with NO2-N:NH4-N and NO3-N:NH4-N ratios of 1.32 ± 0.19:1 and 0.22 ± 0.10:1, respectively. The results show that NH4-N removal efficiency up to 98.7 ± 2.4% and total nitrogen removal of 87.7 ± 6.5% were achieved.

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The aim of this study is to evaluate the feasibility of sludge digester effluent as feeding solution to enrich anaerobic ammonium oxidation (anammox) bacteria. The performance of the two parallel pilot scale‐upflow packed bed anammox reactors (UPBAn1 and UPBAn2) are examined in terms of the enrichment of anammox bacteria. The control experiment is set up conducting synthetic wastewater as feeding solution in the UPBAn1 reactor whereas, the sludge digester effluent is fed to the nitritation reactor and then the partially nitrated digester effluent to the UPBAn2 reactor. Anammox activities are evaluated by mass balances based on ammonium (NH4+), nitrite (NO2−), and nitrate (NO3−) analysis and NRR. Microbial community of anammox bacteria is analyzed using real‐time polymerase chain reaction (PCR). The results demonstrate that UPBAn 1 and UPBAn2 reactors are successfully enriched on days 64 and 40 with NRRs of 19.54 and 19.43 g N m−3 per day, respectively. This study reveals that both synthetic wastewater and digester effluent are suitable for the enrichment of anammox bacteria; however, digester effluent as feeding solution for enrichment of anammox bacteria based on the ease of process control and process stability is more advisable.