Investigation of Laboratory-Scale and Pilot-Scale Attached Growth Ammonia Removal Kinetics at Cold Temperature and Low Influent Carbon

Abstract

A mobile testing center was installed at a lagoon wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) at Terrebonne, Canada to investigate the rate of ammonia removal of attached growth treatment systems at 4°C and at low influent carbon concentrations. The testing center housed two laboratory-scale reactors, a pilot-scale BioStyr system (Veolia Water) and a pilot-scale moving bed bioreactor (MBBR) system (Veolia Water). Although the rates of laboratory-scale and the pilot-scale systems demonstrated that the exposure time to low temperature has a significant effect on the kinetics of the system, the ammonia removal rates of all the systems were shown to be significant at 4°C. A strong correlation was demonstrated between the rates of ammonia removal produced by the laboratory-scale reactors, the pilot BioStyr system and pilot MBBR system; thus verifying the scaleup capability of the laboratory-scale reactors and demonstrating that nitrifiers can achieve ammonia removal under cold temperature conditions for elapsed periods of time independent of the reactor design. Finally, the ammonia removal rates of the laboratory-scale systems, the BioStyr pilot system, and the MBBR pilot system were all accurately predicted by a recently proposed Theta model.