The research team of the Aalto University (Finland), partner of the LIFE Project ECOGRANULARWATER, presents the first advances achieved regarding the experimentation carried out at a lab scale for the groundwater treatment by a sequencing batch bioreactor amended with molecular nitrogen.

In the framework of this project, a bioreactor was built and configured as granular sludge technology, and was started-up and operated for the treatment of nitrate-contaminated synthetic groundwater. A cylinder of 2.2 liters was used and it was amended with a synthetic wastewater simulating a real groundwater composition with 100mg-N L^-1 of Nitrate. However, the concentration of organic matter was changing during the operation period, which has lasted 225 days. The performance of the bioreactor in terms of nitrogen removal during the whole operational time was analyzed.

On the other hand, the microbial communities of Bacteria, Archaea and Fungi domain were analyzed by the means of high throughput sequencing, revealing their structure and their dynamics during the operation of the system at different influent organic matter concentrations.

The results obtained so far, pointed out that the granular sludge technology is a feasible solution for the treatment of nitrogen-contaminated groundwater.

The description of the whole experience and the results obtained can be consulted in this article: Dowload article in PDF