The new Canadian federal wastewater regulations, which restricts the release of ammonia from treated wastewaters, has resulted in upgrade initiatives at many water resource recovery facilities across the country to reduce the discharge of ammonia into our natural waters. The objective of this dissertation is therefore to investigate and optimize the performance of two attached growth technologies for rural and peri-urban/urban municipal ammonia removal. In particular, the first specific objective of this dissertation is to investigate the performance and microbial response of the BioCord technology as an upgrade system for the post-carbon removal nitrification of rural wastewaters. The second specific objective is to study the start-up of an attached growth anammox technology to enhance current knowledge pertaining to anammox biofilm attachment, growth and maturation.
The results pertaining to the first specific objective of this research, a study of the design and optimization of the BioCord technology, demonstrates a recommended design rate for the post-carbon removal, nitrifying BioCord system of a surface area loading rate (SALR) of 1.6 NH4⁺-N/m²·d and up to 1.8 NH4⁺-N/m²·d with steady ammonia-nitrogen removal efficiencies greater than 90% and steady and low solids production rate up to 0.26 g TSS/d. A loss of system stability and biofilm sloughing, identified as fluctuating ammonia removal rates and solids production rates, were observed at elevated SALRs of 2.1 and 2.4 g -N/m²·d. The microbial results indicate that the meso-scale structure of the biofilm and the micro-animal population are directly affected by operational conditions. Enhanced air scouring configuration is shown to be a potential optimization strategy to prevent the clogging of biofilm pores and improve the system stability in terms of solids production rate in the BioCord technology.
The results pertaining to the second specific objective of this research, the study of inoculation and carrier modification strategies for the rapid start-up of attached growth anammox technology, demonstrates significantly higher kinetics, faster biofilm growth and greater anammox bacteria enrichment on the silica-functionalized carriers and pre-seeded denitrifying carriers in a system inoculated with detached anammox biofilm mass during the early stages of attachment and growth of start-up. The study suggests that the use of the silica-functionalized and pre-seeded denitrifying carriers along with detached anammox biofilm inoculation has the potential to accelerate the anammox biofilm attachment, growth and maturation.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uottawa.ca/oai:ruor.uottawa.ca:10393/41163 |
| Date | 02 October 2020 |
| Creators | Tian, Xin |
| Contributors | Delatolla, Robert |
| Publisher | Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa |
| Source Sets | Université d’Ottawa |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | application/pdf |
Page generated in 0.003 seconds