Pre-anaerobic treatment enhanced partial nitrification start-up coupled with anammox for advanced nitrogen removal from low C/N domestic wastewater.

[Display omitted] • TIN removal reached 92.06% by PN/A process and no external carbon need. • Pre-anaerobic treatment enhanced partial nitrification start-up (NAR > 90%). • The total aerobic HRT was only 5.7 h and the DO was as low as 0.5–1.0 mg/L. • Ca. Brocadia was enriched and the abundance increased from 0.02% to 0.23%. A modified two-stage partial nitrification/anammox (PN/A) process with short aerobic HRT of 5.7 h was established and realized advanced nitrogen removal from domestic wastewater. The first process was partial nitrification in the PN-SBR, the initiation and stable maintenance of partial nitrification was achieved by pre-anaerobic treatment without inoculation or addition of inhibitor, nitrite accumulation rate was over 90% and maintained over 200 days, meanwhile pre-anaerobic improved the storage of endogenous carbon sources to enhance the nitrogen removal efficiency. The second process was anammox in the AMX-SBR, which was fed with the effluent of PN-SBR, the effluent total inorganic nitrogen was below 5 mgN/L, nitrogen removal efficiency reached 92.06%. Furthermore, Candidatus-Brocadia was enriched after treating domestic sewage with low ammonia from 0.02% to 0.23%.This study demonstrated the feasibility of starting and maintaining partial nitrification by pre-anaerobic treatment and the feasibility of nitrogen removal by coupling simultaneous-nitrification–denitrification with anammox to treat actual municipal sewage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]