Journal of Agriculture
and Environmental Sciences

Study on Beer Wastewater as External Carbon Source in the A2/O Process for Enhancing Nitrogen and Phosphorus Removal
Dominick J. Kapumbe, Fangjing Liu, Kisoholo M. Adelard, Ji Dandan, Yin Xiaozhou, Li Yongfeng

Abstract
The study aimed to investigate the potential use of beer wastewater as external carbon sources to solve carbon deficiency problems and to estimate the removal efficiency of nitrogen and phosphorus in anaerobic-anoxic-oxic (A2/O) process by laboratory experiments. It was shown that the removal efficiency substantially changed with addition of different dosage of external carbon (COD=0 mg·L−1, COD=30 mg·L−1, COD=50 mg·L−1, COD=70 mg·L−1, COD=90 mg·L−1 and COD=110 mg·L−1), and the removal efficiency of nitrogen was 57.98%, 68.57%, 82.06%, 66.9%, 54.32% and 40.56%, respectively. The removal efficiency of phosphorus was 76.98%, 75.41%, 73.33%, 72.07%, 70.86% and 69.36%, respectively. By comparison, COD=50 mg·L−1 was found to be the best dosage of external carbon, the efficiency of nitrogen removal was higher than that without external carbon source by 20.45%, and the efficiency of total phosphorus (TP) removal was just lower by 3.65% than that without external carbon source. The results show that beer wastewater can be an economical and effective external carbon source for enhancing nitrogen and phosphorus removal.

Full Text: PDF     DOI: 10.15640/jaes.v7n2a5