Centro de Investigación y Desarrollo en Criotecnología de Alim...

Cheese whey CW is a nutrient deficient dairy effluent which requires external nutrient supplementation for aerobic treatment CW supplemented with ammonia can be treated using aerobic granular sludge AGS in a sequencing batch reactor SBR AGS are aggregates of microbial origin that do not coagulate under reduced hydrodynamic shear and settle significantly faster than activated sludge flocs However granular instability slow granulation start-up high energy consumption and CO2 emission have been reported as the main limitations in bacterial AGS-SBR Algal-bacterial granular systems have shown be an innovative alternative to improve these limitations Unfortunately algal-bacterial granular systems for the treatment of wastewaters with higher organic loads such as CW have been poorly studied In this study an algal-bacterial granular system implemented in a SBR SBRAB for the aerobic treatment of ammonia-supplemented CW wastewaters was investigated and compared with a bacterial granular reactor SBRB Mass balances were used to estimate carbon and nitrogen N assimilation nitrification and denitrification in both set-ups SBRB exhibited COD and ammonia removal of 100 and 94 respectively high nitrification 89 and simultaneous nitrification-denitrification SND of 23 leading to an inorganic N removal of 30 The efficient algal-bacterial symbiosis in granular systems completely removed COD and ammonia 100 present in the dairy wastewater SBRAB microalgae growth could reduce about 20 of the CO2 emissions produced by bacterial oxidation of organic compounds according to estimates based on synthesis reactions of bacterial and algal biomass in which the amount of assimilated N determined by mass balance was taken into account A lower nitrification 75 and minor loss of N by denitrifying activity 5 Ng SND 2 was also encountered in SBRAB as a result of its higher biomass production which could be used for the generation of value-added products such as biofertilizers and biostimulants Copyright 2024 The Authors Published by Elsevier Ltd All rights reserved

Centro de Investigación y Desarrollo en Criotecnología de Alimentos (CIDCA), Facultad de Ciencias Exactas, Universidad Nacional de la Plata, 47 y 116 s/N, La Plata, Buenos Aires, Argentina.

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Assessment of the performance of a symbiotic microalgal-bacterial granular sludge reactor for the removal of nitrogen an...