Feasibility of an innovative integrated process of simultaneous desulfurization and denitrification

An anaerobic expanding-bed reactor was adopted to investigate the feasibility of an innovative inte-grated process of simultaneous desulfurization and denitrification (SDD) for high strength wastewater. In the re-actor, beterotrophic bacteria (including sulfate reducing bacterium and denitrifying bacteria) and autotrophic bacteria (including Thiobacillus denitrificans) cooperated together by incubating and enriching functional bac-teria on different carriers in the anaerobic activated sludge. Synthetic wastewater with high concentrations of sul-fate and nitrate was employed. The experimental results showed that the removal efficiency of sulfate and nitrate was above 85%, elemental sulfur was observed while nitrate was absent in effluent. The balance of sulfur, ni-trogen and electron was discussed respectively, which indicated that the integrated SDD process could be actual-ized. These results might provide a guidance to further investigate the key factors affecting the integrated SDD process and to improve the efficiency of desulfurization and denitrification in wastewater treatment.