Advanced nitrogen removal from municipal wastewater treatment plant secondary effluent using a deep bed denitrification filter

With the improvement of wastewater discharge standards, wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) are continually undergoing technological improvements to meet the evolving standards. In this study, a quartz sand deep bed denitrification filter (DBDF) was used to purify WWTP secondary effluent, utilizing high nitrate nitrogen concentrations and a low C/N ratio. Results show that more than 90% of nitrate nitrogen (NO 3 -N) and 75% of Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD) could be removed by the 20th day of filtration. When the filter layer depth was set to 1,600 mm and the additional carbon source CH 3 OH was maintained at 30 mg L −1 COD (20 mg L −1 methanol), the total nitrogen (TN) and COD concentrations of DBDF effluent were stabilized below 5 and 30 mg L −1 , respectively. Analysis of fluorescence revealed that DBDF had a stronger effect on the removal of dissolved organic matter (DOM), especially of aromatic protein-like substances. High throughput sequencing and qPCR results indicate a distinctly stratified microbial distribution for the main functional species in DBDF, with quartz sand providing a good environment for microbes. The phyla Proteobacteria, Bacteroidetes , and Chloroflexi were found to be the dominant species in DBDF.