External carbon feeding strategy for enhancing nitrogen removal in SBR

Effective method for feeding an external carbon source (ECS) in SBR was investigated to enhance denitrification based on modifying the anoxic/aerobic sub-cycle for swine wastewater treatment. The wastewater discharged from the scraper-type barns contains relatively low readily biodegradable organic. Therefore NOx-N was accumulated during repeating sub-cycle in SBR operation. When acetic acid was fed as ECS during the final sub-cycle, the maximum nitrogen removal rate was 0.22 kg N/m³/d. This was due to both less denitrification rate during the sub-cycle period and inhibition of denitrification by pH drop during the final cycle. The pH drop was caused by a large amount of ECS feeding to remove high concentration of NOx-N in the final period. To overcome these limitations and achieve higher nitrogen removal rate, the intermittent ECS feeding method with raw wastewater at every anoxic period was developed. Using the modifying ECS feeding method, the removal rate was increased to 0.45 kg N/m³/d without NOx-N accumulation.