José Luis Campos

• Adolfo Ibáñez University

Nitrogen contamination of water sources poses significant environmental and health risks. The sulfur-driven simultaneous nitrification and autotrophic denitrification (SNAD) process offers a cost-effective solution, as it operates in a single reactor, requires no organic carbon addition, and produces minimal sludge. However, this process remains un...

Retrofitting wastewater treatment plants with continuous aerobic granular sludge reactors is a promising alternative to enhance treatment capacities and reduce footprint. This study investigates the main variables influencing granulation and microbial dynamics in two reactor configurations (25 L): stirred tanks in series (R1) and a plug-flow-like s...

La contaminación de aguas subterráneas con nitrato es un problema que podría afectar gravemente la disponibilidad de agua potable en Chile. Debido a los altos niveles de dureza del agua en las zonas donde se localiza dicha contaminación, los procesos fisicoquímicos disponibles para la eliminación de nitrato (ósmosis inversa e intercambio iónico) no...

The application of partial nitritation and anammox processes (PN/A) to remove nitrogen can improve the energy efficiency of wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) as well as diminish their operational costs. However, there are still several limitations that are preventing the widespread application of PN/A processes in urban WWTPs such as: (a) the los...

A two-stage system (partial nitritation (PN) and anammox processes) was used to remove nitrogen from the dewatering liquor originating from the thermal hydrolysis/anaerobic digestion (THP/AD) of municipal WWTP sludge. Two strategies were tested to start up the PN reactor: 1) maintaining a fixed hydraulic retention time (HRT) and increasing the ammo...

Cyclic episodes of granules formation and disintegration took place in two lab-scale aerobic granular sludge sequencing batch reactors, one fed with synthetic wastewater (COD: 0.6 g L-1 and NH4+-N: 0.06 g L-1) and operated at a constant organic loading rate (2.5 g COD per L d), and the other fed with real wastewater (soluble COD: 0.27-1.37 and NH4+...

Partial nitritation was pointed out as the key step to implement the autotrophic nitrogen removal processes at low temperature. This study investigated the initiation and maintenance of a nitritation process with simultaneous COD removal in a sequencing batch reactor (SBR) run at 15 °C and fed with primary settled urban wastewater characterized by...

Members of the genus Pseudomonas inhabit diverse environments, such as soil, water, plants and humans. The variability of habitats is reflected in the diversity of the structure and composition of their genomes. This cosmopolitan bacterial genus includes species of biotechnological, medical and environmental importance. In this study, we report on...

Here, we report the complete genome sequence of Pseudomonas chil-ensis strain ABC1, which was isolated from a soil interstitial water sample collected at the University Adolfo Ibañez, Valparaiso, Chile. We assembled PacBio reads into a single closed contig with 209ϫ mean coverage, yielding a 4,035,896-bp sequence with 62% GC content and 3,555 predi...

The anammox process is an energy efficient promising alternative to biologically remove the nitrogen. Thus, a 5-L anammox granular reactor was inoculated with sludge coming from a sidestream partial nitritation and anammox reactor (>200 mg N/L and 30 °C) and it was directly subjected to 15 ± 1 °C treating mimicked municipal wastewater (50 mg N/L)....

Treating the organic fraction of municipal solid waste (OFMSW) can be performed by coupling the anaerobic digestion (AD) and partial nitritation-anammox (PN-AMX) processes for organic matter and nitrogen removal, respectively. Besides, an ammonia stripping (AS) step before the AD benefit the removal of organic matter. In the present study, the oper...

An alternative of decentralized in-situ treatment for wastewater from condominiums based on aerobic granular biomass is proposed in this research to promote water reuse. It was demonstrated at a laboratory scale that it is possible to achieve granular biomass with this kind of wastewater. The granulation process was completed after 14 days of opera...

The biochemical methane potential test (BMP) is the most common analytical technique to predict the performance of anaerobic digesters. However, this assay is time-consuming (from 20 to over than 100 days) and consequently impractical when it is necessary to obtain a quick result. Several methods are available for faster BMP prediction but, unfortu...

Sludge is a by-product of municipal wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) and its management contributes significantly to the operating costs. Large WWTPs usually have anaerobic sludge digesters to valorize sludge as methane and to reduce its mass. However, the low methane market price opens the possibility for generating other high value-added produ...

When partial nitritation-anammox (PN-AMX) processes are applied to treat the mainstream in wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs), it is difficult to fulfil the total nitrogen (TN) quality requirements established by the European Union (<10 g TN/m³). The operation of the anammox process was evaluated here in a continuous stirred tank reactor operated...

The accumulation capacity of a mixed microbial culture (MMC) is affected if the substrate used in the accumulation experiments differs from the one used in the enrichment. For this reason, the effect of substrate switching was studied to determine the versatility of a MMC enriched in a mixture of VFAs (VFAmix) to overcome this problem. The MMC was...

Wastewater source-separation and on-site treatment systems face severe problems in wastewater availability. Therefore, the effect of repeated short-term starvation and reactivation periods on a partial nitritation-anammox (PN/AMX) based processes were assessed treating digested blackwater at room temperature. Two sequencing batch reactors (SBR) wer...

Nitrification and sulfur-based autotrophic denitrification processes can be used to remove ammonia from wastewater in an economical way. However, under certain operational conditions, these processes accumulate intermediate compounds, such as elemental sulphur, nitrite, and nitrous oxide, that are noxious for the environment. In order to predict th...

The reduced footprint of Aerobic Granular Sludge (AGS) systems constitutes a good alternative to conventional treatments, despite their associated drawbacks (long start-up periods and high aeration requirements for granules formation and integrity). This study presents a pulsed aeration regime as a strategy to overcome these problems. Two AGS seque...

The development and stability of aerobic granular sludge (AGS) was studied in two Sequencing Batch Reactors (SBRs) treating fish canning wastewater. R1 cycle comprised a fully aerobic reaction phase, while R2 cycle included a plug-flow anaerobic feeding/reaction followed by an aerobic reaction phase. The performance of the AGS reactors was compared...

Anaerobic digestion (AD) is commonly used for the stabilization of agro-food wastes and recovery of energy as methane. Since AD removes organic C but not nutrients (N and P), additional processes to remove them are usually applied to meet the stringent effluent criteria. However, in the past years, there was a shift from the removal to the recovery...

The treatment of pig manure can be performed by anaerobic digestion to diminish the organic matter content and produce biogas, and the resulting digestate has to be subsequently treated for the removal of nitrogenous compounds. The partial nitritation-anammox (PN-AMX) process constitutes an interesting alternative. In the present study, three diffe...

The decentralized wastewater treatment plants need to be simple to operate, space saving and energy efficient to reduce their high associated operational costs (Fröba et al. 2017). The combination of the partial nitritation and anammox (PN/AMX) processes is an effective and compact method for remove the nitrogen autotrophically (Cao et al. 2017). T...

A novel continuous flow system with "flat geometry" composed by two completely mixed aerobic tanks in series and a settler was used to promote the formation of aerobic granular sludge. Making similarities of this system with a typical sequencing batch reactor (SBR), for aerobic granules cultivation, the value of the tank 1/tank 2 vol ratio and the...

The nitrogen removal via nitrite pathway has gained great interest since it makes possible to maximize the energy efficiency in the urban wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs). Throughout the combination of the partial nitritation and anammox processes (PN/AMX), nitrogen can be fully autotrophically removed requiring 60% less energy for aeration and...

The ELAN® process is based on granular biomass, which performs the partial nitritation and anammox processes in a single unit system. Granule development is key to stablish the required biomass stratification, to perform simultaneously aerobic and anoxic processes, and facilitate the retention of slow growing autotrophic microorganisms. The process...

A single stage partial nitritation and anammox granular pilot scale reactor (600 L) was operated to treat primary settled sewage in an urban wastewater treatment plant. The fed wastewater contained low total nitrogen concentrations of 6–25 mg TN/L and the system operated without temperature control ranging from 18 to 12 °C. A control strategy, base...

The partial nitritation-anammox (PN-AMX) process applied to wastewaters with high NaCl concentration was studied until now using simulated media, without considering the effect of organic matter concentration and the shift in microbial populations. This research work presents results on the application of this process to the treatment of saline ind...

The performance of the partial nitritation/anammox processes was evaluated for the treatment of fish canning effluents. A sequencing batch reactor (SBR) was fed with industrial wastewater, with variable salt and total ammonium nitrogen (TAN) concentrations in the range of 1.75-18.00 g-NaCl L-1 and 112 - 267 mg-TAN L-1. The SBR operation was divided...

The application of autotrophic nitrogen removal processes in the main line of wastewater treatment plants will contribute to achieve its self-energy-sufficiency. However, the effective suppression of nitrite oxidizing bacteria (NOB) activity at the conditions of low temperature and low ammonium concentration (mainstream conditions) was identified a...

The effect of free ammonia (NH 3 or FA), free nitrous acid (HNO 2 or FNA), and total alkalinity (TA) on the performance of a partial nitrification (PN) sequencing batch reactor (SBR) treating anaerobically pretreated pig slurry was studied. The SBR was operated under alternating oxic/anoxic (O/A) conditions and was fed during anoxic phases. This st...

The stable partial nitritation-anammox (PN/A) process implementation in the main line of a wastewater treatment plants would lead them closer to the energy autarky. In this study, granular sludge and integrated fixed film activated sludge (IFAS) reactors are presented as two promising configurations to develop the one-stage mainstream PN/A process....

The effects of orange azo dye over ammonia oxidising (AOB) and anammox bacteria activities were tested. Performed batch tests indicated that concentrations lower than 650 mgorange/L stimulated AOB activity, while anammox bacteria activity was inhibited at concentrations higher than 25 mgorange/L. Long-term performance of a continuous stirred tank r...

The main bottleneck to maintain the long term stability of the partial nitritation-anammox processes, especially those operated at low temperatures and nitrogen concentrations is the undesirable development of nitrite oxidizing bacteria (NOB). When this occurs, the punctual addition of compounds with the capacity to specifically inhibit NOB without...

The inhibitory effect of heavy metals on the specific activity of anammox biomass grown in the form of granules, together with ammonia oxidizing bacteria, has been evaluated. Tested metals were Cu+2, Cr+2, Pb+2, Zn+2, Cd+2, Ni+2, Mn+2 and Fe+2 (normally found in the landfill leachates) in a range of concentrations of 0-800 mg/L. Estimated values of...

Floatation events are commonly observed in anammox, denitrifying and anaerobic granular systems mostly subjected to overloading conditions. Although several operational strategies have been proposed to avoid floatation of granular biomass, until now, there is no consensus about the conditions responsible for this phenomenon. In the present study, a...

The application of autotrophic nitrogen removal processes at mainstream conditions can bring wastewater treatment plants to energy autarky. Recent research performed in this topic have highlighted the development of nitrite oxidizing bacteria (NOB) as the major bottleneck of the process, either in two (partial nitrification – anammox) or one reacto...

Application of anammox based processes is nowadays an efficient way to remove nitrogen from wastewaters, being good alternative to the conventional nitrification-denitrification process. This chapter reviews the possible configurations to apply the anammox process, being special attention to the previous partial nitritation, necessary to obtain the...

Aerobic granular sludge represents an interesting approach for simultaneous organic matter and nitrogen removal in wastewater treatment plants. However, the information about microbial communities in aerobic granular systems dealing with industrial wastewater like pig slurry is limited. Herein, bacterial diversity and dynamics were assessed in a pi...

Microbial populations present in the granular sludge collected from an aerobic SBR plant at pilot scale treating swine slurry were identified. Bacterial community composition changed throughout the operational period from flocculent activated sludge, used as inoculum, to mature aerobic granules. The microbial diversity increased with the granulatio...

The simultaneous nitrification, Anammox and denitrification (SNAD) process discovered six years ago is an adaptation of the autotrophic denitrification process that allows for treating nitrogen-rich wastewater streams with moderate amounts of organic carbon. Several authors have noted that it is possible to utilize organic carbon to promote nitroge...

The operation of wastewater treatment plants results in direct emissions, from the biological processes, of greenhouse gases (GHG) such as carbon dioxide (CO 2 ), methane (CH 4 ), and nitrous oxide (N 2 O), as well as indirect emissions resulting from energy generation. In this study, three possible ways to reduce these emissions are discussed and...

Nowadays the application of Anammox based processes in the wastewater treatment plants has given a step forward. The new goal consists of removing the nitrogen present in the main stream of the WWTPs to improve their energetic efficiencies. This new approach aims to remove not only the nitrogen but also to provide a better use of the energy contain...

The present study explores the feasibility of the accumulation of polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs) under the presence of transient concentrations of added sodium chloride, by means of a mixed microbial culture (MMC). This culture was enriched on a mixture of volatile fatty acids (VFAs) containing 0.8g Na(+)/L as NaOH. This MMC presented a maximum PHA a...

A chronological review of the studies on Anammox at USC (Spain) is presented here. On the basis of the results obtained at lab- and pilot-scales, this technology was implemented successfully at two full scale plants treating urban and industrial wastes. Different options to apply this technology to conventional urban and industrial WWTP are discuss...

In this paper, we review the latest developments in biological methods used in the removal of hydrogen sulphide, present in the liquid phase in anaerobic reactors. The toxicity of H2S to methane-forming microorganisms and the problems caused by the presence of this compound in the biogas generated during this process, as well as the main causes of...

The anammox-based process ELAN® was started-up in two different sequencing batch reactors (SBR) pilot plant reactors treating municipal anaerobic digester supernatant. The main difference in the operation of both reactors was the dissolved oxygen (DO) concentration in the bulk liquid. SBR-1 was started at a DO value of 0.4 mg O2/L whereas SBR-2 was...

Los procesos biológicos empleados para el tratamiento de las aguas residuales se pueden llevar a cabo tanto en sistemas de biomasa en suspensión como adherida. Cuando la biomasa se desarrolla de forma adherida crece en muchos casos sobre un material de soporte, formando una biopelícula que contiene una elevada concentración de biomasa, cuyas propie...

Secondary Treatment Effluents (STE) from Kraft mill effluents are discharged into aquatic ecosystems with high color and chronic toxicity contents owing to the recalcitrance of compounds in the effluents. The goal of the study was to evaluate the chemical precipitation, UV/H2O2, and the Fenton processes (H2O2/Fe2+) for chemical oxygen demand (COD)...

The ELAN® technology, based on the partial nitrification/anammox processes in a single stage with granular sludge, was tested for the treatment of fish canning effluents. The good results in the laboratory tests, despite the high salinity of the industrial wastewater, lead to the implementation of the ELAN reactor in an industrial WWTP for the trea...

The denitrification process was studied in two granular biomass denitrifying reactors (USB1 and USB2). In USB1 large quantities of biomass were accumulated (9.5 g VSS L−1) allowing for the treatment of high nitrogen loads ( ). As the biomass granulation process is not immediate the effects of different upflow velocities (0.12–5.5 m h−1) and calcium...

Up to now the main goal of wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) was to remove pollutants content in order to protect downstream users. For this reason most efforts done to improve WWTPs design have been traditionally focused on achieving the disposal requirements in terms of solids, organic matter and nutrients content. Recently, new challenges are...

Filamentous bacteria are associated to biomass settling problems in wastewater treatment plants. In systems based on aerobic granular biomass they have been proposed to contribute to the initial biomass aggregation process. However, their development on mature aerobic granular systems has not been sufficiently studied. In the present research work,...

Obtener una expresión cinética para la precipitación de la estruvita en aguas sintéticas con el fin de que esta expresión matemática permita optimizar el diseño de los equipos para su producción.

e l vertido de aguas residuales con exceso de nutrientes, como nitrógeno y fósforo, en los ecosistemas provoca el crecimiento y proliferación de determinadas plantas, algas y organismos, que consumen una gran cantidad del oxígeno disuelto del medio. Esto provoca una disminución del oxígeno disponible para otras especies y, consecuentemente, se redu...

The anammox based process ELAN® was started-up in two different SBR reactors treating municipal anaerobic digester supernatant. The main difference in the operation of both reactors was the dissolved oxygen (DO) concentration in the bulk liquid. SBR-1 was started at a DO value of 0.5 mg/L whereas SBR-2 was started at DO values of 3 mg/L. Despite bo...

The ELAN® process is an anammox based process carried out with granular biomass in one single reactor. The operation of this ELAN® process was evaluated at low ammonia concentrations of 50 mg N/L and relatively low temperature of 15 ºC in order to simulate the conditions of the water line of a municipal WWTP. Two different laboratory scale sequenci...

Waste-based polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA) production by bacterial enrichments generally follows a three step strategy in which first the wastewater is converted into a volatile fatty acid rich stream that is subsequently used as substrate in a selector and biopolymer production units. In this work, a bacterial community with high biopolymer production...

Fermented wastewaters can be used as substrate for microbial mixed cultures to store the organic carbon fraction in the form of polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs) under transient conditions of presence and absence of carbon source. In the present work a synthetic feeding was used, simulating a pre-acidified wastewater from the washing process of tuna in...

The autotrophic nitrogen removal by the ELAN (R) process (partial nitrification and anammox) appears as a good option to remove nitrogen from saline effluents, like those of the seafood industry. A nitrogen loading rate of 0.2 g N/(L·d) was treated with a removal efficiency of 80% when concentrations of 4.3 g NaCl/L were present. The obtained efflu...

The activated sludge process (AS) is still nowadays the most applied one in wastewater treatment plants (WWTP). This technology evolved throughout this last century into multiple configurations to achieve organic matter (COD, BOD5, etc.) and nutrients (nitrogen and phosphorous) removal. However, the severe increases of energy and sludge management...

BACKGROUND Management of the sludge generated in the wastewater treatment plants accounts for more than 50% of their operational costs. To minimise these costs, technologies capable of reducing the production of sludge in the plant need to be developed, such as aerobic granular systems. The aggregation state of aerobic granular sludge (AGS) could b...

El vertido de aguas residuales con exceso de nutrientes, como nitrógeno y fósforo, en los ecosistemas provoca el crecimiento y proliferación de determinadas plantas, algas y organismos, que consumen una gran cantidad del oxígeno disuelto del medio. Esto provoca una disminución del oxígeno disponible para otras especies y, consecuentemente, se reduc...

Anammox biomass has a long duplication time and low yield, thus the process must be operated in reactors with good sludge retention, such as biofilm systems. Therefore, it would be important to research the ability of Anammox biomass to form biofilms under different conditions. The effects of shear stress and salinity (NaCl and CaCl2) on Anammox bi...

The feasibility of treating the supernatant of a municipal sludge digester supplemented with co-substrates by means of an anammox-based process (ELAN(®)) was tested in Guillarei (NW of Spain). Ammonia concentration measured in the supernatant of the sludge digester varied in the range 800-1,500 g N/m(3) due to the fact that the sludge produced in t...

Autotrophic denitrification is a suitable technology to simultaneously remove oxidised nitrogen compounds and reduced sulphur compounds yielding nitrogen gas, sulphur and sulphate as the main products. In this work, several batch tests were conducted to investigate the cross effect of temperature, pH and free ammonia on the autotrophic denitrificat...

In this work, the performance of a sequencing batch reactor (SBR) on aerobic granular sludge was studied for urban wastewater treatment. The system was inoculated with aerobic activated sludge collected from a wastewater treatment plant and, after 30 days of operation, the first granules observed had an average diameter of 0.1 mm. The biomass conce...

PHA, a naturally occurring biopolymer produced by a wide range of microorganisms, is known for its applications as bioplastic. In recent years the use of agro-industrial wastewater as substrate for PHA production by bacterial enrichments has attracted considerable research attention. Crude glycerol as generated during biodiesel production is a wast...

Biological nitrogen removal in aerobic granular sequencing batch reactors is sensitively affected by process conditions (e.g. dissolved oxygen (DO) concentration, nitrogen loading rate (NLR), influent C/N ratio, among others). The variation of one of these process conditions affects the others, because often they are tightly linked. These interrela...

Poster: Application of aerobic granular pilot scale SBR plant to treat swine slurry wastewaters. Conference: EcoTechnologies for Wastewater Treatment. ECO STP. Santiago de Compostela June, 2012.

The Anammox-based processes are suitable for the treatment of wastewaters characterized by a low carbon to nitrogen (C/N) ratio. The application of the Anammox process requires the availability of an effluent with a NO2- -N/NH4+ -N ratio composition around 1 g g-1, which involves the necessity of a previous step where the partial nitrification is p...

A continuous stirred tank reactor (CSTR) was operated in order to define the appropriate operational conditions to obtain aerobic biomass grown in the form of granules. A selection pressure of 10 m/h of solids settling velocity was imposed while the hydraulic retention time (HRT) was gradually decreased from 6 to 1 h to promote the wash-out of the...

The aerobic granular systems represent a good alternative to substitute the conventional activated sludge process in the treatment of industrial effluents due to the lower surface requirements. In this work the effluent from a seafood industry, characterized by a high variability and the presence of residual amounts of coagulant and flocculant reag...

Nowadays, Anammox based processes have been successfully applied to high temperature and ammonia loaded streams. However, the application of such processes to the main stream of WWTPs opens the possibility of removing the nitrogenous compounds with less energy and chemicals requirements. Furthermore more organic matter is available for methane pro...

The aerobic granular systems are mainly sequencing batch reactors where the biomass is submitted to feast-famine regimes to promote its aggregation in the form of granules. In these systems, different cycle distributions can be applied for the simultaneous removal of organic matter, nitrogen and phosphorus. In this work two strategies were followed...

The first studies about granular biomass developed in aerobic conditions are dated in the early 90’s. Mishima and Nakamura (1991) developed aerobic granules in a UASB type reactor using pure oxygen. This work was not really appreciated at that moment and it was in the late 90’s when extensive research was performed in this field. In these systems t...

Abstract BACKGROUND: Technologies based on aerobic granular biomass are presented as a new alternative application to wastewater treatment due to its advantages in comparison with the conventional activated sludge processes. However, the properties of the aerobic granules can be influenced by the presence of residual amounts of coagulant-flocculan...

This study presents and discusses the usefulness of mathematical models and simulation tools to describe the dynamic behaviour of advanced wastewater treatment plants taking into account technical, environmental, energetic and economical aspects. The main challenge of this work is to compare by simulation different conventional and advanced WWTPs c...

The presence of nitrite during denitrification is generally related to N2O emissions. The aim of this work was to determine the operational conditions that have influences in the specific denitrifying activities (SDA) and N2O production. Two factorial experimental designs (23 and 22) were performed to evaluate the effects of four operational variab...

Full Paper Published in: Operation of an aerobic granular pilot scale SBR plant to treat swine slurry: Process Biochemistry 08/2013; DOI:dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.procbio.2013.06.004 A pilot-scale Sequencing Batch Reactor was operated in order to remove organic matter and nutrients from pig slurry with high variable composition. Aerobic granules grew...

A continuous stirred tank reactor (CSTR) was operated in order to define the appropriate operational conditions to obtain aerobic biomass grown in the form of granules. A selection pressure of 10 m/h of solids settling velocity was imposed while the hydraulic retention time (HRT) was gradually decreased from 6 to 1 h to promote the wash-out of the...

The use of the completely autotrophic nitrogen removal over nitrite (CANON) process as a post-treatment for nitrogen removal from anaerobically pre-treated swine slurry is studied in the present work. The ammonium removal, under oxygen-limited conditions, in a system with anammox bacteria mainly in the form of granules and aerobic ammonium oxidizin...

Nowadays the application of Anammox based processes in the wastewater treatment plants has given a step forward. The new goal consists of removing the nitrogen present in the main stream of the WWTPs to improve their energetic efficiencies. This new approach aims to remove not only the nitrogen but also to provide a better use of the energy contain...

Discharge of effluents produced in the fish-canning industry contributes significantly to the contamination of the environment in the littoral zones where they are discharged. These effluents have salinity similar to sea water, high organic matter content, and high protein concentration. Firstly, solids and oil are separated by physicochemical meth...

The development of new processes and technologies like aerobic granulation has increased the interest in recent years to cope with disadvantages observed in conventional activated sludge process for wastewater treatment. Due to the increased interest in this topic, the fundamentals and applications of aerobic granulation have been compiled. The mai...

The start-up and activation of a nitrifying rotating biological contactor (RBC) and its performance inside a culture tank of rainbow trout were studied. First, in a lab-scale operation, the system was fed with a synthetic medium containing a high ammonia concentration (567 mg NH(4)(+)-N L(-1)) and operated at a high hydraulic retention time (HRT) (...

The aerobic granular systems are a good alternative to the conventional activated sludge (AS) ones to reduce the production of sludge generated in wastewater treatment plants (WWTP). Although the quantity of produced sludge is low its post-treatment is still necessary. In the present work the application of the anaerobic digestion combined with a t...

Enmarcado en los proyectos "NOVEDAR_Consolider" y Togransys, la Universidad de Santiago de Compostela ha realizado un estudio sobre la aplicación de reactores SBR (Sequencing Batch Reactor) en el tratamiento de efluentes generados en granjas ganaderas. No es difícil encontrar este tipo de sistemas en plantas de tratamiento de aguas residuales de or...

The aim of this work was to improve the overall understanding of sequencing batch biofilm reactors (SBBRs) from support selection (biofilm formation) to reactor operation (carbon and nitrogen removal). Supports manufactured with different materials and geometries were tested in 2.5 L SBBRs and it was observed that biofilm accumulation was favoured...

Aerobic granular sludge was produced in a sequencing batch reactor (SBR) characterized by a height to diameter ratio of 2.5 and the use of mechanical stirring. Compact and regular aerobic granules of up to 1.75 mm of average diameter were formed in the reactor with an organic loading rate of 1.75 kg COD/(m3 d). Settling properties of the obtained a...

Intensive swine production is creating scenarios where the swine slurry is not being correctly disposed and valorized and the amount applied to the land frequently exceeds the assimilatory capability of the soil-water-plant ecosystem of the crop lands. Therefore, the physical, chemical or biological treatment of these effluents is needed to avoid c...

Kraft mills are responsible for massive discharges of highly polluted effluents containing high COD concentration, and also exert toxicity on aquatic organisms. This toxic effect is generally related to the presence of abietic acid and sterols. The present work focuses on the search of a possible correlation between the presence of these compounds...