Biotrickling Filtration for the Reduction of N₂O Emitted during Wastewater Treatment

Biotrickling Filtration for the Reduction of N₂O Emitted during Wastewater Treatment: Results from a Long-Term In Situ Pilot-Scale Testing

Han, Heejoo (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology)
Kim, Daehyun D. (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology)
Song, Min Joon (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology)
Yun, Taeho (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology)
Yoon, Hyun (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology; Cornell University)
Lee, Hong Woon (Daega Powder Systems Co., Seoul)
Kim, Young Mo (Hanyang University)
Laureni, M. (TU Delft Sanitary Engineering)
Yoon, S.Y. (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology)

2023

Wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) are a major source of N₂O, a potent greenhouse gas with 300 times higher global warming potential than CO₂. Several approaches have been proposed for mitigation of N₂O emissions from WWTPs and have shown promising yet only site-specific results. Here, self-sustaining biotrickling filtration, an end-of-the-pipe treatment technology, was tested in situ at a full-scale WWTP under realistic operational conditions. Temporally varying untreated wastewater was used as trickling medium, and no temperature control was applied. The off-gas from the covered WWTP aerated section was conveyed through the pilot-scale reactor, and an average removal efficiency of 57.9 ± 29.1% was achieved during 165 days of operation despite the generally low and largely fluctuating influent N₂O concentrations (ranging between 4.8 and 96.4 ppmv). For the following 60-day period, the continuously operated reactor system removed 43.0 ± 21.2% of the periodically augmented N₂O, exhibiting elimination capacities as high as 5.25 g N₂O m^-3·h^-1. Additionally, the bench-scale experiments performed abreast corroborated the resilience of the system to short-term N₂O starvations. Our results corroborate the feasibility of biotrickling filtration for mitigating N₂O emitted from WWTPs and demonstrate its robustness toward suboptimal field operating conditions and N₂O starvation, as also supported by analyses of the microbial compositions and nosZ gene profiles.

activated sludge
biotrickling filtration
in situ pilot test
metagenome
nitrous oxide
nitrous oxide reductase

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:d633e5b4-4033-46d3-a9a3-5fb93ecd50af

https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.2c08818

2023-08-21

0013-936X

Environmental Science & Technology (Washington), 57 (9), 3883-3892

Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.

Institutional Repository

journal article

© 2023 Heejoo Han, Daehyun D. Kim, Min Joon Song, Taeho Yun, Hyun Yoon, Hong Woon Lee, Young Mo Kim, M. Laureni, S.Y. Yoon