The Effect of Operational Conditions on Glycerol-driven Enhanced Biological Phosphorus Removal Using MicroC2000™ and Fate of Glycerol in EBPR Processes

In this work, the authors investigated biological phosphorus removal (EBPR) performances using glycerol as an external carbon source in three full scale plants in the US, in addition to three bench scale tests with different scenarios. The observations were also compared with glycerol-driven EBPR reports in the literature.It is shown that glycerol can be used for EBPR processes via two different pathways; First, via fermentation under anaerobic conditions to propionate and acetate and internalization and conversion of these VFAs to PHA under anaerobic conditions with ortho-phosphate (OP) release and second, internalization of glycerol by dPAOs and PAOs, presumably in the form of organic polymers that can be ultimately converted to PHA with or without OP release via poly-P or glycogen pathways respectively under anaerobic conditions.