Investigation Of Microc™ As An Alternative Carbon Source For Denitrification

The addition of external carbon sources for denitrification becomes necessary for wastewater treatment plants to meet more and more stringent effluent nitrogen limits. The concerns regarding the safety issues and cost of methanol motivated the use of MicroC™ as a non-flammable alternative carbon-source for biological denitrification. The denitrification rates and kinetics obtained by using MicroC™ were determined with both laboratory-acclimated biomass in SBRs system as well as with sludge from full-scale plants. Both low F/M ratio and high F/M ratio tests were performed in this study for comparison. The COD equivalent of MicroC™, the rates and kinetics were used as inputs into the BIOWIN model to simulate and compare the N removal performance with the addition of different external carbons in both pre-denitrification system (MLE) and MLE plus post denitrification system. The temperature effect on performances and the removal of nitrogen was also examined. The ability of a specific carbon-acclimated denitrifying population to instantly utilize other carbon source was also investigated.