Start-up of a combined anaerobic/partial nitritation/anammox process for high-salt mustard wastewater treatment.

To treat high salinity wastewater from the mustard pickling industry, a combined anaerobic, partial nitritation (PN), and anammox process was employed using three connected reactors: an anaerobic sequencing batch biofilm reactor (ASBBR) for anaerobic treatment, a sequencing batch reactor (SBR) for PN, and an upflow anaerobic sludge blanket (UASB) for anammox. The start-up of the three individual reactors was investigated. Results showed that each reactor started up successfully, notwithstanding the stepwise increase of influent salinity to about 16.1 g NaCl/L. In the ASBBR, 89.7 % of chemical oxygen demand in the influent was removed and organic nitrogen was converted to ammonium (NH4 (+)-N). The SBR performed well with NO3 (-)-N concentration of 4.9 mg/L and ratio of NO2 (-)-N to NH4 (+)-N at the range of 1.0 to 1.3 in the effluent, which favored the anammox process. After the start-up of the UASB, the anammox process also showed stability and efficiency with a high total nitrogen removal efficiency of 86.2 % under high salinity of 12.0 g NaCl/L and nitrogen loading rate of 258 mg/(L · day).