Removal of nitrogen components, bulk organics, and fluorophores during one-stage partial nitrification-Anammox treatment of landfill leachate

Abstract Anammox-based processes have been intensively studied for the nitrogen removal from leachate, but less attention was paid to monitoring the evolution of leachate organics. In this study, fluorescence Excitation-Emission Matrix (EEM) measurement coupling with Parallel Factor Analysis (PARAFAC) analysis was used to supplement the routine monitoring in order to reveal more insights into pollutants removal during the leachate treatment by a one-stage partial nitrification-Anammox process (PNA). During this PNA process, up to 96% of total nitrogen and 43% of COD were removed, indicating the potential of PNA process to simultaneously remove nitrogen and organics. Fluorescence intensities and ratios clearly showed the dynamics of influent fluorophores during seasonal variations, where a high amount of protein-like compound was observed during summer months. Protein-like compound was preferentially removed (43–63%) in the PNA process, whereas humic/fulvic-like compounds exhibited recalcitrance to biodegradation. The increase of oxygen supply promoted protein-like compound degradation, which could be associated with the aerobic oxidation pathway. Furthermore, the protein-like compound removal was linearly correlated with the reduction of NH4+-N at limited oxygen conditions (i.e., air flow rate ≤1.6 Lgas/h/Lreactor) (r = 0.97, n = 65). The fluorescence directly extracted at Ex/Em:230 nm/345 nm was strongly correlated with the biodegradable chemical oxidation demand (BCOD) (r = 0.92, n = 204), showing its high potential as an indicator for biodegradable organics. Given the relatively weak correlation between fluorescence parameters and COD, EEM coupled with multivariate partial least squares (PLS) modeling was proposed and exhibited good predictive power for COD, as exemplified by a mean error of 4.5%.