Development of anaerobic ammonium oxidation (anammox) for biological nitrogen removal in domestic wastewater treatment (Case study: Surabaya City, Indonesia) I. Made Wahyu Wijaya, Eddy Setiadi Soedjono, and Nurina Fitriani
Citation: AIP Conference Proceedings 1903, 040013 (2017); doi: 10.1063/1.5011532 View online: https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5011532 View Table of Contents: http://aip.scitation.org/toc/apc/1903/1 Published by the American Institute of Physics
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Development of Anaerobic Ammonium Oxidation (Anammox) for Biological Nitrogen Removal in Domestic Wastewater Treatment (Case Study: Surabaya City, Indonesia) I Made Wahyu Wijaya 1, a) , Eddy Setiadi Soedjono1, b) and Nurina Fitriani2, c) 1
Department of Environmental Engineering, Faculty of Civil Engineering and Planning, Institut Teknologi Sepuluh Nopember, Surabaya, Indonesia. 2 Study Program of Environmental Science and Technology, Department of Biology, Faculty of Science and Technology, Universitas Airlangga, Surabaya, Indonesia a)
Corresponding author:
[email protected] b)
[email protected] c)
[email protected]
Abstract. Domestic wastewater effluent is the main contributor to diverse water pollution problems. The contaminants contained in the wastewater lead the low quality of water. The presence of ammonium and nitrate along with phosphorus are potentially cause eutrophication and endanger aquatic life. Excess nutrients, mostly N and P is the main cause of eutrophication which is result in oxygen depletion, biodiversity reduction, fish kills, odor and increased toxicity. Most of the domestic wastewater in Surabaya City still contains nitrogen that exceeded the threshold. The range of ammonium and orthophosphate concentration in the domestic wastewater is between 6.29 mg/L – 38.91 mg/L and 0.44 mg/L – 1.86 mg/L, respectively. An advance biological nitrogen removal process called anammox is a sustainable and cost effective alternative to the basic method of nitrogen removal, such as nitrification and denitrification. Many research have been conducted through anammox and resulted promisingly way to remove nitrogen. In this process, ammonium will be oxidized with nitrite as an electron acceptor to produce nitrogen gas and low nitrate in anoxic condition. Anammox requires less oxygen demand, no needs external carbon source, and low operational cost. Based on its advantages, anammox is possible to apply in domestic wastewater treatment in Surabaya with many further studies.
INTRODUCTION Surabaya is the second largest city in Indonesia, and become a business center in east part of Java Island. It is a reason of high population living in Surabaya City. Increasing of a population in Surabaya City is in line with the water demand and impacting wastewater generation. In addition to industries, municipal wastewater which is discharged from the households or domestic activities is also the main contributor of wastewater. Domestic wastewater effluent is the main contributor to diverse water pollution problems. Domestic wastewater management is a big problem particularly with improvement in the living standard of a community (1). Grey water is generated as result of living habits, used product, and artificial installation (2). Even today, domestic wastewater is disposed to drainage, river, or lake without proper treatment before (3). Some of the problems caused by wastewater, such as eutrophication, increasing water treatment cost, decreasing the recreational value of water, health risks to humans and livestock, loss of oxygen and undesirable changes in an aquatic ecosystem. In order to prevent the pollution risks, wastewater have to be treated before discharge to the water body. Selection of appropriated treatment process needs the characteristic information of wastewater as references. Minimizing the impacts of domestic effluent on public and environmental health is an important component of on-site wastewater management (4).
Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Construction and Building Engineering (ICONBUILD) 2017 AIP Conf. Proc. 1903, 040013-1–040013-5; https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5011532 Published by AIP Publishing. 978-0-7354-1591-1/$30.00
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Wastewater influent quality can also be affected by the discharge of industrial streams, storm water, surface runoff, etc. River as one of water resource have to be protected by high contaminated wastewater (5,6). The option of reusing treated wastewater is becoming necessary and possible. It is as the result of increased climate change, thus leading to droughts and water scarcity, and the fact that wastewater effluent discharge regulations have become stricter leading to a better water quality (7). Municipal activities, agriculture, and rapid urbanization led to increased nitrogen and phosphorus discharge to a water system. More often, the effluents from municipal wastewater treatment plant failed to meet the national standard for effluent quality (8). Excess nutrients, mostly N and P is a main cause of eutrophication which results in oxygen depletion, biodiversity reduction, fish kills, odor, and increased toxicity (9). Nitrogen contribution to wastewater generates from food waste, fruits, vegetables, oil, and leaves food scrap. The toilet is the repository for a large proportion of nitrogen which is contained in the domestic wastewater stream. Excreted nitrogen is a waste product from protein metabolism, which is produced from digestion proses (faeces) and kidney excreted (urine). A mineralizing system occurs in the septic tank and converting protein into ammonium. The anaerobic condition makes ammonia production more favored over nitrite. Wastewater from laundry is also potentially a source of nitrogen (4). Biological nutrient removal technologies are preferred and widely used to remove nitrogen and phosphorus from domestic wastewater and protect water quality (10). Chemical compositions in the domestic wastewater are highly diverse substances from simple compounds to complex polymers. Types and amount of substances show the characteristic of domestic wastewater. Characterization at the overall substances is important to expand the knowledge in selecting appropriate wastewater treatment processes or models (11,12). Determination of characteristic of domestic wastewater is very important in order to evaluate the existing treatment plants and selection of appropriate treatment plant. Besides that, it also necessary to determine the utilization of treated or untreated wastewater based on their contents (12). The quality of treated wastewater is important for evaluating WWTP performance and subsequent impacts or risks on human health, surrounding environment and design of advanced wastewater treatment and/or reclamation processes. Wastewater characteristic is related to water quality standard that is aimed to protect the designated use of water body (13). Biological nitrogen removal has been widely used as promisingly technology in removing nitrogen from wastewater. Conventional technology still retains the basic principle of complete nitrogen cycle through nitrification and denitrification (10). Anammox is a sustainable and cost effective alternative to the basic method of nitrogen removal. Anammox has been identified as a new biotechnology for nitrogen reduction from wastewater. It has advantages of reducing greenhouse gas emission, low carbon consumption, the low energy needed and high performance (14). This process has been developed in many country in treating wastewater with high nitrogen content, such as China, Netherland, USA, Japan, etc. (15–20). In this paper, some domestic wastewater around Surabaya City, Indonesia have been measured for nutrient content including nitrogen and phosphorus. Based on the results, anammox will be promoted as alternative bioprocess to be applied in Indonesia.
METHOD To support the move to this technology, this paper reviews the nutrient content of domestic wastewater in Surabaya City. Besides that, it will describe the novel of anammox process to be applied as new technology in removing nitrogen. A literature study was conducted to support the technology of anammox. Nitrogen and phosphorus become two kinds of nutrient that were measured in this study. Laboratory analysis has been conducted to measure both the nitrogen and phosphorus concentration in domestic wastewater. The analysis was conducted in Laboratory of Water Treatment in Department of Environmental Engineering, ITS Surabaya, Indonesia.
FIGURE 1. Sampling locations in Surabaya City (blue=Tegalsari District; red=Genteng District; yellow=Sukolilo District; cyan=Wonocolo District; green=Dukuh Pakis District)
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Nitrogen compound which is analyzed is ammonium (NH4+) and nitrate (NO3-), while orthophosphate represented phosphorus. Both parameters were measured according to Standard Method (21). Samples of domestic wastewater were collected from five districts area in Surabaya City and can be seen in the Fig. 1 above.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION Nutrient concentration is important in determining wastewater quality and its potential risk to the water stream. Wastewater with high nutrient content increases the risk of eutrophication in a water body. The concentration of nutrient should be reduced to a level protective of the receiving stream (22). A sample of domestic wastewater was taken from communal wastewater treatment unit operated in each area. Anaerobic baffled reactor (ABR) is the common unit used as communal wastewater treatment, such as in Surabaya City (23). The results of nutrient (N and P) analysis can be seen in Table 1 below. Location
Tegalsari Genteng Sukolilo Wonocolo Dukuh Pakis
TABLE 1. Concentration of ammonium, nitrate, and ortophosphate. Ammonium (mg/L) Nitrate (mg/L) Phosphorus (mg/L)
7.36 38.91 12.82 6.29 35.79
0.12 0.92 0.00 0.05 0.052
1.86 0.44 1.08 1.52 1.61
According to the regulation from a ministry of environment and forestry 68/2016, the maximum threshold of ammonia in wastewater is 10 mg/L. The results showed that there are three locations have wastewater with exceeding in ammonia concentration. Other areas showed low ammonia concentration even below the threshold. Generally, domestic wastewater is classified as low strength nitrogen content. However, the exceeded ammonia concentration is potential raise the eutrophication rate. Barber and Stuckey (2000) stated that 60% of nitrogen contained in the wastewater is ammonia and the rest of organic nitrogen for the 40%. Eutrophication causes rapid growth of algae and risk of oxygen depletion in the water. Competition between aquatic lives in using dissolved oxygen will be getting up. The concentration of dissolved oxygen less than 2 mg/L will cause mortality for aquatic life (25). Based on the study from Yang et al., (2008), amount of 1-2 mg/L of total nitrogen and 0.03-0.1 mg/L of total phosphorus will cause eutrophication. A complete nitrogen removal is when reactive nitrogen is stored or converted back to N 2 gas through denitrification. This process also has the intermediate product, such as nitrous oxide which contributes to the greenhouse effect and ozone depletion. This process has been challenged by discover of anaerobic ammonium oxidation (anammox). Anammox is mediated by autotropic bacteria capable of oxidizing ammonia directly to nitrogen gas without emission of nitrous oxide (N2O) (20). Since the first invention of anammox in a fluidized bed reactor in 1995, it has been widely investigated and frequently reported. Anammox process was developed at Delft University of Technology in 1990s become a new novel and low cost approach to removing nitrogen from wastewater (27). Compared to the common process of nitrogen removal, anammox can reduce 64% of aeration, 100% of the exogenous electron donor, and sludge production by 80-90% (28–30). Some benefits from anammox include high nitrogen removal rate, lower operational cost, and small space requirements. This process was successfully applied to treat ammonium rich wastewater, leachate, digested sludge, and monosodium glutamate wastewater. Anammox bacteria will oxidize ammonium by using nitrite as an electron acceptor. The nitrite is obtained from nitrification which is conducted by nitrifies in aerobic condition. In other words, the nitrogen in wastewater can be removed by combining nitrification and anammox. Another study stated that anammox also could coexist with denitrified bacteria in a simultaneous process. Anammox bacteria were dominantly exist in low carbon condition meanwhile the high carbon was favored by denitrified (31). Presence of ammonium and nitrite become the substrates of anammox bacteria. Anammox has the important role in nitrogen gas production for anoxic water environment (32). Key factors that effecting anammox process in reducing nitrogen include substrate concentration, temperature, dissolved oxygen, organic matter and sludge retention time (10). Previous research have been done to improve anammox process through an additional substrate, intermittent aeration, and the certain pH and temperature. Research from Crowe et al., (2012) showed the using of sludge from Lower St. Lawrence increasing the dinitrogen gas production up to 33%. The mixing of sludge from wastewater treatment and anammox reactor that is conducted by Sánchez Guillén et al., (2015) has shorten the acclimatization period within 45 days. Recently research by Wang et
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al., (2016) showed the increase of acclimatization period up to 28 days with the mixing of denitrification sludge and anammox biomass. Limitation of anammox process is its long start-up period due to the low of bacteria growth rate (29). In a nitrification, there are two main bacteria involved, ammonium oxidizing bacteria (AOB) with nitrite oxidizing bacteria (NOB). They need amount of oxygen to oxidize ammonium or nitrite. NOB become the inhibitor of anammox process since there will be a competition between NOB and anammox in using nitrite (20,35,36). Maintenance of dissolved oxygen (DO) is a way to inhibit the activity of NOB. Miao et al., (2016) reported the using of intermittent aeration with combination 7 minutes aerobic (DO 0.5±0.08 mg/L) and 21 minutes anoxic has increased the total nitrogen (TN) removal up to 70%. Hou et al., (2017) has used intermittent aeration in a constructed wetland to improve the nitrogen removal. The result showed that ammonium removal up to 94.6% and TN up to 82.6% with 20 minutes aeration and 100 without aeration. Since the nitrogen concentration in the sample has exceeded the threshold, it needs improvement on the wastewater treatment. Anaerobic baffled reactor (ABR) in Surabaya City has been used commonly as communal wastewater treatment. Nitrogen removal resulted from the ABR still very low. Promoting anammox process in ABR potentially become an improvement for ABR in removing nitrogen better. This combination process still outlined for further research.
CONCLUSION The concentration of ammonium and orthophosphate in the domestic wastewater in Surabaya City ranged between 6.29 mg/L – 38.91 mg/L and 0.44 mg/L – 1.86 mg/L, respectively. The ammonium concentration was exceeded the national threshold. Anammox is one of promisingly method to remove nitrogen from domestic wastewater. Based on its advantages, anammox is possible to develop in domestic wastewater treatment in Surabaya City with many further studies.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT We are grateful for the Ministry of Research and Higher Education of Indonesia for the PMDSU scholarship which includes fund this part of research.
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