Bioresource Technology 207 (2016) 422429

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Bioresource Technology
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/biortech

Simultaneous removal of aniline, nitrogen and phosphorus in

aniline-containing wastewater treatment by using sequencing
batch reactor
Yu Jiang, Hongyu Wang, Yu Shang, Kai Yang
School of Civil Engineering, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430072, China

h i g h l i g h t s
 A sequencing batch reactor was used to treat aniline-containing wastewater.
 Simultaneous removal of aniline, nitrogen and phosphorus was achieved.
 Good removal performance was maintained during variation of operating conditions.
+

 The accumulation of NH4-N and TN during aniline biodegradation was alleviated.

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Received 6 December 2015
Received in revised form 1 February 2016
Accepted 4 February 2016
Available online 9 February 2016
Keywords:
Aniline
Denitrifying phosphorus removal
Anaerobic/aerobic/anoxic condition
Sequencing batch reactor
Bioremediation

a b s t r a c t
The high removal efficiencies of traditional biological aniline-degrading systems always lead to accumulation of ammonium. In this study, simultaneous removal of aniline, nitrogen and phosphorus in a single
sequencing batch reactor was achieved by using anaerobic/aerobic/anoxic (A/O/A) operational process.
The removal efficiencies of COD, NH+4-N, TN, TP were over 95.80%, 83.03%, 87.13%, 90.95%, respectively
in most cases with 250 mg L 1 of initial aniline at 6 h cycle when DO was 5.5 0.5 mg L 1. Aniline was
able to be completely degraded when initial concentrations were less than 750 mg L 1. When DO
increased, the removal rate of NH+4-N and TP slightly increased along with the moderate decrease of
removal efficiencies of TN. The variation of HRT had obvious influence on removal performance of pollutants. The system showed high removal efficiencies of aniline, COD and nutrients during the variation of
operating conditions, which might contribute to disposal of aniline-rich industrial wastewater.
2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Aniline is hazardous to living beings and there has been more
concern about its disposal along with extensive applications
(Orge et al., 2015). Industrial wastewater, agricultural runoff and
urban sewage often contain aniline and various other pollutants.
Some of these compounds are toxic, carcinogenic, mutagenic and
teratogenic. They are able to remain in water and soil for a long
period of time, which has harmful impacts on environmental quality (Zhu et al., 2012). Therefore, it is important to treat wastewater
containing these compounds before discharging into water bodies.
China as well as USA has rated aniline as a persistent organic pollutant of which the release amount is strictly limited (Liu et al.,
2015).
The dispose of aniline and most of its derivatives can be
achieved by several physicochemical methods such as photode Corresponding author. Tel.: +86 027 61218623; fax: +86 027 68775328.
E-mail address: kaiyangwhu10@163.com (K. Yang).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.biortech.2016.02.014
0960-8524/ 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

composition, electrolysis, ozone oxidation, resin adsorption and

electro-Fenton, which have limits because of relatively high economic cost, energy consumption, and difficulty to remove pollutants completely (Qi et al., 2002; Anotai et al., 2006). Biological
methods utilize microorganisms to thoroughly degrade aniline,
which are suitable for large-scale wastewater treatment (Wang
et al., 2007). Several biological technologies have been developed
to remove aniline in recent years such as aniline-degrading bacteria, activated sludge reactors, moving bed biofilm reactors, which
showed relatively high removal rates (Campos et al., 2002; Li
et al., 2010; Dvork et al., 2014). Most of these processes focus
on realizing good removal performance of aniline and COD. However, the fact that accumulation of ammonia nitrogen (NH+4-N)
and high concentration of total nitrogen (TN) coming from a large
amount of nitrogen in aniline is always ignored in previous studies.
Moreover, to our knowledge the phosphorus removal in these
treatment systems has not meant mentioned.
Nitrogen and phosphorus are common pollutants in sewerage
and industrial wastewater. Due to the fact that they are major

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Y. Jiang et al. / Bioresource Technology 207 (2016) 422429

causes of some environmental problems such as eutrophication

and several diseases which affect human beings, their release has
attached much attention. There have been increasing wastewater
treatment plants over the world which are committed to removal
of nitrogen and phosphorus (Li et al., 2014). Traditional nitrogen
biodegradation consists of two main processes, namely nitrification and denitrification. Most of denitrifying bacteria are heterotrophic, which have a competitive relationship with phosphateaccumulating organisms (PAOs), leading to more difficulties in
simultaneous removal of nitrogen and phosphorus (Meinhold
et al., 1999). Unlike conventional phosphorus removal by release
under anaerobic conditions and uptake in aerobic environments,
denitrifying phosphate-accumulating organisms (DNPAOs) which
belong to PAOs, have capability of uptaking phosphorus by nitrate
and/or nitrite as electron acceptors in anoxic situation and utilizing
O2 under aerobic condition, resulting in denitrification and phosphorus removal at the same time (Zhang et al., 2011; Sun et al.,
2015). Additionally, the process has less carbon source consumption as well as aeration costs and lower cell yield production,
which makes DNPAOs have advantages over general biological
methods to reduce nitrogen and phosphorus in wastewater
(Wang et al., 2015a).
In the present study, DNPAOs was enriched in SBR reactor operated by anaerobic/aerobic/anoxic (A/O/A) mode and one of the two
SBR reactors was fed with synthetic wastewater containing aniline.
The effect of organic loading rate, aeration as well as HRT on aniline, COD and nutrients removal was evaluated and the variations
of pollutants concentrations in two reactors within one cycle was
investigated. To our knowledge, this is the first report of simultaneous removal of aniline, nitrogen and phosphorus in the single
sequencing batch reactor. The work was conducted to remove both
aniline and nitrogen coming from aniline biodegradation. In the
meantime, the phosphorus was taken up in A/O/A operation mode.
It is reasonably expected that the removal of both aniline and
nutrients with high efficiency by the system might be an attractive
alternative to aniline-containing wastewater treatment.
2. Methods

Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of the reactors.

Table 1
Operating condition of each stage in two SBRs.
Stages
Stages
Stages
Stages
Stages
Stages
Stages
Stages
Stages
Stages
Stages

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10

Cycles

Days

COD loading rate

(g COD L 1 d 1)

DO in aerobic
phase (mg L 1)

HRT
(h)

140
4180
81120
121160
161200
201240
241280
281340
341380
381410

110
1120
2130
3140
4150
5160
6170
7180
8190
91100

0.9
1.5
2.7
3.9
1.5
1.5
1.5
1.5
1.5
1.5

5.5 0.5
5.5 0.5
5.5 0.5
5.5 0.5
4.0 0.5
5.5 0.5
7.0 0.5
5.5 0.5
5.5 0.5
5.5 0.5

12
12
12
12
12
12
12
8
12
16

2.1. Sludge and media

Seed sludge inoculated into the SBRs was obtained from the
secondary sedimentation tank of Shahu municipal wastewater
treatment plant in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China. The initial COD
loading rate fed in R1 and R2 was 0.9 g COD L 1 d 1. The composition of initial synthetic wastewater for R1 was prepared with
analytical-grade chemicals as follow (per liter): aniline 125 mg,
NH4Cl 50.2 mg, NaNO3 79.7 mg, KH2PO4 21.9 mg, K2HPO4
3H2O
36.8 mg, CH3COONa 192.3 mg and 1 ml of trace element solution.
As for R2, the initial influent contained (per liter): CH3COONa
576.9 mg, NH4Cl 86.0 mg, NaNO3 136.6 mg, KH2PO4 21.9 mg,
K2HPO4
3H2O 36.8 mg and 1 ml of trace element solution. The trace
element solution contained the following ingredients (per liter):
FeCl3
6H2O 5.0 g, H3BO3 0.10 g, CuSO4
5H2O 0.10 g, KI 0.20 g,
MnCl2
4H2O 0.50 g, Na2MoO4
2H2O 0.20 g, ZnSO4
7H2O 0.30 g,
CoCl2
6H2O 0.15 g, EDTA-2Na 10.0 g.
2.2. Reactor operation
Investigations were conducted in two parallel SBRs made of
plexiglass. As shown in Fig. 1, the reactor consisted of two cylindrical columns with working volume of 9 L and the diameter/height
(D/H) was 6.67. Influent synthetic wastewater was fed into the system through a pipe located at the top of the reactor by using a peristaltic pump and aeration was carried out through a porous stone

diffuser at the bottom of the reactor. The sequential operation was

automatically controlled by timers in the initial cycle of 6 h and the
temperature of the reactors were maintained at 30 2 C by using
water bath between the inner and outer columns. The initial operation was as follows: 5 min of feeding, 120 min of anaerobic agitation phase, 120 min of aerobic phase, 90 min of anoxic agitation
phase, 20 min of settling time and 5 min of effluent withdrawal
phase. For effluent stage, 4.5 L of the supernatant was discharged
from the reactor by a diaphragm pump with 50% of volume
exchange ratio. Thus, the hydraulic retention time (HRT) was
12 h and the dissolved oxygen (DO) in the anaerobic phase, aerobic
phase and anoxic phase were controlled at about 0.05, 5.5,
0.1 mg L 1, respectively. After the system was stable, the organic
loading rate, DO in aerobic phase as well as HRT were varied in
order to investigate the pollutants removal abilities of the two
reactors with the variations in operation parameters. The operating
conditions were shown in Table 1. The changes of process parameters of the two reactors are at the same time. Total nitrogen (TN)
in influent was adjusted accordingly to remain the same ratio of
carbon and nitrogen source throughout the whole operation. The
samples were taken from reactors at 1 or 1.5 h intervals and residual concentration of aniline, COD, NH+4-N, TN and TP were tested.
During the whole experiments, the concentrations of mixed liquor
suspended solids (MLSS) in the two reactors were adjusted to
4200 300 mg L 1.

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Y. Jiang et al. / Bioresource Technology 207 (2016) 422429

2.3. Analytical methods

In all experiments, analysis of pollutants concentrations in
influent and effluent of the two reactors was carried out after the
samples were withdrawn and filtered. The concentrations of aniline, COD, NH+4-N, NO2 -N, NO3 -N, TN and TP were measured
according to the standard methods (APHA, 2012). The tests were
done in triplicate. The settling properties of the sludge were
reflected by sludge volume index (SVI) which was calculated as
the volume occupied by biomass after 30 min of settling (Zhang
et al., 2015). Dissolved oxygen (DO) and temperature in the reactor
were measured by YSI550A DO meter. The batch tests for the proportion of DNPAOs were conducted according to Zhang et al., 2015.
The pH values of samples were monitored by pH meter (PC-320).

3. Results and discussion

3.1. Aniline and COD biodegradation with different organic loading
rates
After 2 months of operation, the sludge in reactors had good
settling properties. SVI was less than 60 mL g 1 and a large amount
of DNPAOs were enriched. The removal performances of aniline as
well as COD by both R1 and R2 during the stable operation with
different organic loading rates were shown in Fig. 2. As for aniline
which could be seen in Fig. 2(a), over 99.8% could be degraded by
activated sludge in R1 even when the initial concentration of aniline was 500 mg L 1. It was also found from further tests that
750 mg L 1 of aniline was able to be completely degraded within
6 h cycles of operation (data not shown). Several pure isolates
and microbial consortia have been investigated for their capability
of aniline degradation as a promising alternate for treating
wastewater containing aromatic compounds by some other previous studies (Wang et al., 2007; Campo et al., 2011). The result in
this work was consistent with previous reports regarding to aniline
aerobic biodegradation in which pretty high concentration of initial aniline could be thoroughly removed by microorganisms
(Xiao et al., 2009; Li et al., 2010). As shown in Fig. 2(b), both R1
and R2 had high removal efficiencies of COD when organic loading
rates ranged from 0.9 to 2.7 g COD L 1 d 1. The removal rates of
COD in R1 and R2 were up to 94.22% and 93.53%, respectively.
The average residual COD concentrations with around 450, 750
and 1350 mg L 1 of COD in synthetic influent was 16.46, 26.10,
53.09 mg L 1, respectively for R1 and 12.54, 31.81, 54.43 mg L 1,

respectively for R2. Although the removal efficiencies of COD

remained relatively high during 30 days of operation, an obvious
increase of COD concentrations in effluent could be found when
initial COD concentration was 1350 mg L 1 in both of two reactors.
Rezaei et al. (2012) mentioned the phenomenon that the metabolism of microorganisms in the system was slightly inhibited with
the increase of aniline concentration in inflow due to the toxicity
of the aromatic compound after gradual replacement of glucose
by aniline in aerobic granular bioreactor. However, the residual
concentrations of COD in effluents of R1 and R2 had no obvious difference at each COD level. The comparison of the COD removal performance in this work between R1 and R2 showed that aniline
seemed to have no negative effect on COD removal. The results
indicated that the biomass in R1 developed the adaptability to
the toxic environment due to the gradual increase of aniline concentration in influent. This played an important role in acclimation
of microorganisms. The fast biodegradation by aniline-degrading
microorganisms contributed to the reduction of hazardous substrates which might suppress the cell growth of other living beings
in the reactor. Since aniline concentration fluctuates wildly and
varies in different types of wastewater, the adaptation of the system to a large range of aniline concentration might be advantageous to practical wastewater treatment with pretreatment unit.

3.2. Simultaneous removal of nitrogen and phosphorus in the presence

of aniline
Nitrogen removal ability was also presented in two SBRs. As
seen in Fig. 3, the average removal efficiencies of NH+4-N in R2 with
22.5 and 37.5 mg L 1 of initial concentrations were 94.20% and
94.81%, respectively. The residual concentration in effluent was
less than 3 mg L 1. Compared to R2, R1 showed relatively lower
removal efficiency of NH+4-N and the average removal rates in these
two stages were 83.13% and 85.36%, respectively. The high removal
rate of NH+4-N owed to nitrification in aerobic phase of operation,
during which the NH+4-N was transferred to NO2 -N and NO3 -N
(Chen et al., 2009; Gonzlez et al., 2014). However, the residual
concentrations of NH+4-N significantly increased in both R1 and
R2 between day 21 and day 30. During this period, the residual
concentrations of NH+4-N in R1 and R2 were beyond 8.83 and
7.31 mg L 1, respectively. The higher residual concentrations of
NH+4-N in R1 than that in R2 might be due to higher concentration
of aniline in inflow. NH+4-N is one of the major by-products in
biological treatment of aniline-rich wastewater since it has been

Fig. 2. Aniline degradation (a) and COD consumption (b) at different initial aniline concentrations.

Y. Jiang et al. / Bioresource Technology 207 (2016) 422429

425

Fig. 3. Nitrogen removal performance with different COD loading rates.

studied that the first step of aniline biodegradation causes release

of nitrogen in the form of NH+4-N (Lyons et al., 1984; ONeill et al.,
2000). The NH+4-N production along with aniline degradation led to
more NH+4-N in the system. These NH+4-N could not be completely
utilized by microorganisms within a limited time, resulting in high
concentration of NH+4-N in effluent. With regard to TN removal in
R1, the residual TN concentrations were below 10 mg L 1 after
6 h of biodegradation when initial aniline concentration was 125
or 250 mg L 1. However, with aniline concentration in inflow
increasing to 500 mg L 1, there was a notable decrease in TN
removal efficiency and average value was only 54.68% in this stage.
This might be due to the limited carbon source for denitrifying
microorganisms and DNPAOs to remove a large amount of nitrogen
in anoxic phase since aniline which provided the most of COD was
completely degraded by aniline-utilizing bacteria with active
metabolism in former aerobic phase. The phenomenon that the
lack of carbon substrate would reduce the removal efficiencies of
nutrients in this study could also be found in actual biological
treatment plants (Podedworna and Zubrowska-Sudol, 2012). This
might also explain the result that the residual concentrations of
TN in R2 were generally lower than that in R1 in the same stage.
Average removal efficiencies of R2 in the three stages were
92.04%, 91.94% and 87.81%, respectively. There were no toxic compounds in R2 and COD removal in aerobic phase was not as good as
that in R1 by virtue of the fact that most of COD in R2 was provided
by sodium acetate instead of aniline. The good removal performance of NH+4-N and TN by aerobic nitrification and anoxic denitrification contributed to alleviating nitrogen accumulation in
wastewater in the presence of aniline. Gonzlez et al. (2014)
reported p-chloroaniline biodegradation in continuous biofilm system which consisted of three main units. p-Chloroaniline removal
was achieved in the first continuous biofilm reactor and ammonium released from p-chloroaniline was reduced through nitrification in the subsequent aerobic up-flow fixed-bed reactor and
denitrification in the third anoxic reactor. However, the aniline
biodegradation, nitrification and denitrification were realized in
the single reactor in this work. Compared to the system described
by Gonzlez et al. (2014), the process in this study was much simpler and easier for operation, which might be promising in treating
wastewater containing aromatic compounds.
The result also showed excellent phosphorus reduction ability,
which could be seen from Fig. 4. In system fed with or without aniline, phosphorus removal efficiencies were generally over 88%,
even in R1 when initial aniline concentration reached 500 mg L 1

or beyond. The average residual concentrations of phosphorus after

one cycle of operation in three stages were 0.64, 0.69, 0.98 mg L 1,
respectively in R1 and 0.53, 0.68, 0.78 mg L 1, respectively in R2. It
was obtained from the comparison of phosphorus removal performances in the two reactors that the toxicity of aniline might not be
much harmful to PAOs and DNPAOs considering the fact that the
uptake of phosphorus seemed not to be significantly suppressed
by the increase of aniline. There were diverse microorganisms
working together such as genus Acinetobacter, Pseudomonas, Flexibacter, Hyphomicrobium, Rhodobacter in aniline-degrading system.
These results revealed that aniline-degrading microorganisms,
nitrifying cells as well as DNPAOs were able to realize mutual
cooperation in aniline-containing wastewater treatment.

3.3. Effect of DO and HRT on pollutants removal performance

Effects of different DO concentrations in aerobic phase and HRT
on pollutants removal were investigated. As shown in Fig. 5, the
average removal efficiency of aniline within 30 days of operation
in R1 was 99.99% and high degradation rates remained when DO
concentrations ranged from 3.5 to 7.5 mg L 1, indicating the strong
activity of aniline-degrading microorganisms in R1. Both R1 and R2

Fig. 4. Variation of phosphorus concentrations in influent and effluent of the two

bioreactors and removal efficiencies over 30-day operational period.

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Y. Jiang et al. / Bioresource Technology 207 (2016) 422429

had high removal efficiencies of COD during the variation of DO.

The average residual concentrations of COD were 30.69, 26.59,
28.37 mg L 1, respectively in R1 when DO in the system was
adjusted to 4.0 0.5, 5.5 0.5, 7.0 0.5 mg L 1. The removal efficiencies of COD within one cycle were up to 94.35% in R2, even

at relatively low concentration of DO. The good removal performance of both aniline and COD showed high efficiency of organic
substances biodegradation in fluctuation of DO, indicating that
the degradation of organic compounds in the system might be
adaptive to different working conditions in actual processes. It

Fig. 5. Variation of pollutants concentrations in effluent during changes of DO in aerobic phase.

Y. Jiang et al. / Bioresource Technology 207 (2016) 422429

427

Table 2
Removal efficiencies of pollutants during variation of HRT.
R1

COD
Aniline
NH+-N
TN
TP

R2

8h

12 h

16 h

8h

12 h

16 h

96.76
100.00
78.96
81.99
89.95

96.28
100.00
92.27
84.87
93.81

97.03
100.00
97.21
90.92
93.45

96.92

97.15

97.44

85.47
86.65
76.47

90.18
92.73
92.96

96.56
92.12
93.04

was found from Fig. 5(c) that NH+4-N removal efficiency had no significant decrease with the drop of DO concentrations and average
removal efficiency in DO of 4.0 0.5, 5.5 0.5, 7.0 0.5 mg L 1
was 89.90%, 90.67%, 91.52%, respectively in R1 and 90.83%,
92.14%, 92.84%, respectively in R2. Almost no NO2 -N was detected
in effluent in both R1 and R2 during the variation of DO (data not
shown), revealing that NOB, AOB as well as denitrification bacteria
in the system were efficient and able to endure the toxicity of aniline. The reduction of TN in the system relied on denitrification
processes in anaerobic and anoxic conditions, which were hardly
influenced by aeration rate in aerobic phase. However, high DO
concentrations might take more time to decrease in anoxic phase,
which led to a slight increase of residual TN concentration. The
average removal efficiency of TN decreased from 87.42% to
75.39% in R1 and 92.38% to 84.23% in R2 with the DO concentration
increased from 4.0 0.5 to 7.0 0.5 mg L 1. The phenomenon that
nitrogen removal was enhanced at low DO levels was also mentioned in reports of Sayi-Ucar et al. (2015), in which TN was thoroughly removed under low DO conditions. Phosphorus
assimilation was also examined when DO concentration altered.
The residual concentration of phosphorus had no obvious fluctuation with DO concentration of 5.5 0.5 or 7.0 0.5 mg L 1 in the
two systems. Both R1 and R2 showed good removal performance
in these two stages and phosphorus concentrations in effluent
were generally below 0.8 mg L 1. However, when DO concentrations decreased to 4.0 0.5 mg L 1, the average residual concentration of phosphorus increased to 2.13 and 1.79 mg L 1, respectively
in R1 and R2. This indicated that in the systems aerobic uptake of
phosphorus was one of major ways to achieve phosphorus removal
in wastewater. The remarkable decrease of DO concentration
would inhibit this process, which caused increase of residual phosphorus concentration (Wang et al., 2015b). The test of pollutants
removal performance at different HRT was carried out by operating
the two reactors over three runs for 30 days. As seen in Table 2,
aniline was able to be completely degraded when HRT was 8 h,
12 h or 16 h. There was no notable distinction in COD removal
among these three conditions. However, the NH+4-N removal efficiency increased with the delay of reaction time, especially that
in the aerobic phase. As with TN and TP, there was a noticeable
drop of removal efficiency when the cycle was reduced to 4 h while
there was an increase when the HRT was adjusted from 12 h to
16 h, which revealed that the removal of nutrients improved along
with the extension of HRT (Liang et al., 2015). Considering the
residual concentrations of pollutants as well as energy saving,
12 h might be optimal HRT for both of the two systems.

3.4. Residual concentration profiles of pollutants during one cycle of

operation
In order to investigate the specific process of nutrients removal
in R1 and R2, typical profiles of pollutants compounds in reactors
during SBR cycle are presented in Fig. 6. As shown in Fig. 6(a), aniline concentration in R1 decreased moderately in anaerobic phase
since aniline was able to be utilized as the sole source of carbon,

Fig. 6. Nutrients removal at the end of each phase in a typical operation cycle.

nitrogen and energy for denitrifying bacteria in the presence of

NO3 -N (Hu et al., 2014). It was also noted that there was a slight
drop in NO3 -N concentration during this period (data not shown),
suggesting that a fraction of aniline was degraded through denitrification. However, reduction of aniline mainly depended on aerobic
biodegradation. Aniline was able to be completely removed before
anoxic phase started. Over 95.51% of initial aniline was degraded in
aerobic phase. Aerobic biodegradation of aniline basically relied on
two steps, namely transformation of aniline into catechol via
aniline dioxygenase firstly and conversion into cis,cis-muconate
through the ortho-cleavage pathway by the catechol
1,2-dioxygenase or the meta-cleavage pathway by the catechol
2,3-dioxygenase afterward (Hyung-Yeel et al., 2000). NH+4-N was
liberated from aniline in first step of aniline biodegradation
(ONeill et al., 2000; Dvork et al., 2014). However, most of
NH+4-N coming from influent as well as aniline was removed in
aerobic phase in the present study, which successfully solved the
problem of excess NH+4-N in effluent. Both R1 and R2 showed high
removal rate of NH+4-N in this stage and generally residual concentrations at the end of the aerobic phase were less than 3 mg L 1. As

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Y. Jiang et al. / Bioresource Technology 207 (2016) 422429

for COD concentrations in R1 and R2, after a slight decrease in

anaerobic phase there was a significant drop in the aerobic phase.
More than 65% of COD was removed in aerobic conditions and
residual concentrations were always below 40 mg L 1. The
consumption of COD in anaerobic conditions might be the result
of heterotrophic denitrification, which led to the noticeable
decrease of TN concentrations in the two systems (Bassin et al.,
2012). In anoxic phase, phosphorus uptake and denitrification took
place simultaneously. It could be found from Fig. 6(a) and (b) that
TP reduction mainly depended on two ways in these two systems.
One was the uptake of phosphorus in aerobic conditions, which
was also described by Zhang et al. (2014), who used A/O/A
sequencing batch reactor to cultivate aerobic granular sludge. After
the release of phosphorus in anaerobic conditions by traditional
PAOs and DNPAOs, a large amount of phosphorus was accumulated
in the aerobic phase (Merzouki et al., 2005; Sun et al., 2015).
Another way was achieved by DNPAOs in anoxic conditions. After
energy conservation and polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA) synthesis
in anaerobic condition in the presence of organic matters, PAOs
use the stored PHA to remove phosphorus during the aerobic or
anoxic period. This was quite different with the conventional SBR
process since this kind of microorganisms were able to perform
phosphorus uptake and denitrification simultaneously with nitrate
or nitrite instead of oxygen as electron acceptors, which could be
proved by the decrease of phosphorus during anoxic phase
(Wang et al., 2009). The decrease of residual TN during this period
might be due to metabolism of DNPAOs, ordinary denitrifying
bacteria as well as the process of anaerobic ammonium oxidation.
The phenomenon that the removal of NO2 -N and NO3 -N with
relatively low concentration of COD in anoxic conditions could also
be found in the report of simultaneous denitrifying polyphosphateaccumulating system described by Liu and Li, 2015. The good
removal performance of organic compounds, nitrogen and phosphorus in the system illustrated the cooperative relationship
among functional microorganisms. According to the results of the
present study, no additional devices were required for the
subsequent removal of nitrogen and phosphorus. The removal of
both aniline and nutrients with high efficiency by a single reactor
could save the occupation area of the system and simplify
operation as well as management, which might contribute to the
practical application of the process.
4. Conclusions
In this work, simultaneous removal of aniline, nitrogen and
phosphorus in a single sequencing batch reactor was achieved.
Aniline in inflow was able to be completely degraded within every
cycle of operation during the whole test when initial concentrations were less than 750 mg L 1. Under optimal conditions (Aniline
250 mg L 1, DO 5.5 0.5 mg L 1, HRT 12 h), the removal efficiencies of COD, NH+4-N, TN, TP were generally over 95.80%, 83.03%,
87.13%, 90.95%, respectively. The system in the present study
might have significance for nutrient removal from wastewater in
the presence of aniline.
Acknowledgements
This work was financially supported by the National Natural
Science Foundation of China (NSFC) (NO. 51378400), the National
Science and Technology Pillar Program (2014BAL04B04), the Natural Science Foundation of Hubei Province, China (NO. 2013CFB289).
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