• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
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• v.38 no.5
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• pp.228-235
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• 2016

Nitrite accumulation is essential for constructing an anammox process. As the pH in the reactor exerts a complicated and strong influence on the reaction rate, we investigated its effects upon treatment of an ammonic wastewater (2,000 mgN/L) through modeling and experiment. The modeling results indicated that the reaction stability is strongly affected by pH, which results in a severe reduction of the 'stable region' of operation under alkaline environments. On a coordinate of the total ammonia nitrogen (TAN) concentration vs. pH, the maximal stable reaction rates and the maximal nitrite accumulation potentials could be found on the 'stability ridge' that separates the stable region from the unstable region. We achieved a stable and high ammonia oxidation rate (${\sim}6kgN/m^3-d$) with a nitrite accumulation ratio of ~99% when operated near the 'stability ridge'. The optimum pH that can be observed in experiments varies with the TAN concentrations utilized, although the intrinsic optimum pH is fixed. The direction of change is that the optimum operational pH falls as the TAN concentration increases, which is in excellent accordance with the observations in the literature. The optimum operational pH for 95% nitritation was predicted to be ~8.0, whereas it was ~7.2 for 55% partial nitritation to produce an anammox feed in our experimental conditions.

• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
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• v.30 no.7
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• pp.700-704
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• 2008

Nitrite and free ammonia have been known as substrate inhibitors in anaerobic ammonium oxidation. To reduce inhibitory effect of these substrates, the NH$_3$-N/NO$_2$-N ratio in the influent could be properly controlled in anaerobic ammonium oxidation process. Five kinds of NH$_3$-N/NO$_2$-N ratio were assayed in batch to find optimum NH$_3$-N/NO$_2$-N ratio, curtailing substrate inhibition. As the results of batch test, the highest T-N removal efficiency of 88% was obtained at 1.00 : 1.30 of NH$_3$-N/NO$_2$-N ratio. In addition, rate constants for ammonium and nitrite in zero-order kinetics were found to be the highest values as 7.66 mg/L$\cdot$hr and 11.89 mg/L$\cdot$hr at 1.00 : 1.30 ratio, respectively. However, as for the specific anammox activity, the ratio of NH$_3$-N/NO$_2$-N ratio was recommended as 1 : 1.15 which can maintain the highest SAA during continuous operation and preclude the accumulation of nitrite in the reactor.

• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
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• v.35 no.1
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• pp.57-63
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• 2013

A combined process consisted of a biofilm reactor and a continuously stirred-tank reactor (CSTR) was investigated for highly loaded ammonium wastewater treatment via nitrite accumulation. To enhance ammonium oxidizing bacteria over nitrite oxidizing bacteria on the surface of carriers, the biofilm reactor was operated at temperature of $35^{\circ}C$ for more than three months but the influent ammonium (500 mg-N/L) was partially oxidized to nitrite (240 mg-N/L). As pH was increased from 7.5 to 8.0, nitrite accumulation was fully achieved due to the inhibition of nitrite oxidizing bacteria under high free ammonia concentration. The biofilm reactor performance was severely deteriorated at the hydraulic retention time of 12 hr, at which incomplete nitrification of ammonia was observed. Various solubilization methods were applied to sewage sludge for enhancing its biodegradability and the combined method, alkaline followed by ultrasonic, gave the highest solubilization efficiency (58%); the solubilized solution was used as the external carbon source for denitrification reaction in CSTR. FISH analysis showed that the dominant microorganisms on the carriers were ammonium oxidizing bacteria such as Nitrosomonas spp. and Nitrospirar spp. but low amounts of nitrite oxidizing bacteria as Nitrobacter spp. was also detected.

• Clean Technology
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.398-403
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• 2012

Selective nitrification and granulation have been carried out in a pilot scale air-lift sequencing batch reactor (SBR) for stable and economical nitrogen removal from wastewater. The SBR showed about 100% nitrification efficiency up to 1.0 kg ${NH_4}^+-N/m^3{\cdot}d$, about 90% efficiency at 1.0-2.0 kg ${NH_4}^+-N/m^3{\cdot}d$, and it was less than 90% when the load was higher than 2.0 kg ${NH_4}^+-N/m^3{\cdot}d$. Nitrite accumulation was induced by selective inhibition of nitrite oxidizing bacteria by free ammonia inhibition and dissolved oxygen limitation. For the purpose, high nitrite ratio (> 0.95) was obtained by keeping the pH higher than 8.0 and dissolved oxygen lower than 1.5 mg/L. In addition, sludge granulation was achieved by keeping reactor settling time to 5 minutes to wash out poor settling sludge and to promote the growth of granulation sludge. The operation accelerated sludge granulation and the sludge volume index (SVI) decreased and stably maintained to less than 75 in 60 days.

• Applied Biological Chemistry
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• v.48 no.3
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• pp.189-200
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• 2005

Biological nitrogen fixation is an important process for academic and industrial aspects. This review will briefly compare industrial and biological nitrogen fixation and cover the characteristics of biological nitrogen fixation studied in Azotobacter vinelandii. Various organisms can carry out biological nitrogen fixation and recently the researches on the reaction mechanism were concentrated on the free-living microorganism, A. vinelandii. Nitrogen fixation, which transforms atmospheric $N_2$ into ammonia, is chemically a reduction reaction requiring electron donation. Nitrogenase, the biological nitrgen fixer, accepts electrons from biological electron donors, and transfers them to the active site, FeMo-cofactor, through $Fe_4S_4$ cluster in Fe protein and P-cluster in MoFe protein. The electron transport and the proton transport are very important processes in the nitrogenase catalysis to understand its reaction mechanism, and the interactions between FeMo-cofactor and nitrogen molecule are at the center of biological nitrogen fixation mechanism. Spectroscopic studies including protein X-ray crystallography, EPR and $M{\ddot{o}}ssbauer$, biochemical approaches including substrate and inhibitor interactions as well as site-directed mutation study, and chemical approach to synthesize the FeMo-cofactor model compounds were used for biological nitrogen fixation study. Recent research results from these area were presented, and finally, a new nitrogenase reaction mechanism will be proposed based on the various research results.