Biological Nitrogen Removal Database

A manually curated data resource for microbial nitrogen removal


Marine systems


Experimental setup


Influent:Seawater

Denitrification system:Recirculating aquaculture systems Heterotrophic Denitrification

Denitrifying reactor:Packed bed

Medium:Polyvinyl alcohol(PVA) with hydrolyzed collagen (HC)

Culture taken from:Activated sludge

Organism (s) cultured:nan

Respiration:Anaerobic

Electron donor:Glucose

Electron acceptor:Nitrate


Experimental Information


Input NO3-N (mg/l):3.5

Nitrate removal rate (mg NO3-N/l/h):nan

Denitrification rate (gNO3-N removed/m3/day):34

Microorganisms identified:nan

Molecular tools:nan


Information about Article


Major findings:In developing and optimizing the marine recirculating system, study found out that addition or increased salt concentration inhibits denitrification and a reduction in hydraulic retention time increases the rate of nitrate removal with denitrification efficiency being reduced.

Authors:Park et al., 2001

Title:Salinity acclimation of immobilized freshwater denitrifier.

Pubmed link:None

Full research link:Link

Abstract:To develop a marine recirculating aquarium system, the marine denitrification process was evaluated for the effects of salinity, temperature and hydraulic retention time (HRT) on marine denitrification processes. Denitrifier consortium was collected from a continuous denitrification tank operated for 120 days and was immobilized by the PVA-boric acid method. Four reactors were simultaneously operated to determine the effect of salinity. One of them, R-1, was supplied with tap water as a control. and others, R-2, R-3 and R-4 were supplied with sea water diluted with tap water by 3 steps (7.5, 15, 30 ppt), 2 steps (15, 30 ppt) and 1 step (30 ppt), respectively. The loading rate of nitrate-nitrogen averaged 20.6 g/m3/day. Salinity caused nitrite-nitrogen formation at the early stage of acclimation, even though the conversion rates of nitrate for high salinites were similar to that of the control (freshwater). Addition of salt to the system might cause a damage to denitrifiers that convert nitrate to nitrogen gas, however the activity was recovered after 10 days of operation. Also, the direct acclimation method to seawater was more efficient than the stepwise acclimation method when the freshwater denitrification system was converted to the marine system. As the HRT was reduced, the nitrate removal rate increased and denitrification efficiency decreased. The optimum HRT was 3 h with a nitrate removal rate of 34 g/m3/day. Any further decrease in HRT decreased the nitrate removal rate due to the rapid drop of nitrate removal efficiency and high flow rate.