Glycerol Driven EBPR Correlated with Tetrasphaera Enrichment

Enhanced biological phosphorus removal (EBPR) is considered a potentially efficient and economical process to meet stringent phosphorus (P) discharge requirement in wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs). The success of EBPR depends on the presence of adequate organic compounds in the influent wastewater. In plants with low influent organics, addition of an external carbon source is necessary to support both denitrification and EBPR. In recent years, glycerol, has obtained great attention as a non-corrosive and economical alternative supplemental carbon source for EBPR process. Many facilities with different influent characteristics, configurations and anaerobic retention time have observed improvement in the EBPR process after glycerol addition. Although utilization of glycerol has been increased in WWTPs, the number of studies investigating its role on EBPR process is limited. The overall goal of this study is to investigate glycerol driven EBPR process and develop effective operation criteria. To achieve the objectives, a survey of full scale EBPR facilities utilizing glycerol as supplemental carbon source, batch testing and 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing were conducted. The effect of glycerol on phosphorus release and uptake kinetics was evaluated via full scale assessment and batch testing. Microbial composition of various glycerol acclimated sludge samples was assessed to identify a correlation between glycerol usage and the growth of different PAO groups. This study aims to propose an anaerobic metabolic model for PAOs with glycerol as the carbon source.