The synergistic effects of dissolved oxygen and pH on N2O production in biological domestic wastewater treatment under nitrifying conditions.

Nitrous oxide (N2O) is a potent greenhouse gas, which is produced during nitrifying and denitrifying processes. Some factors and mechanisms affecting N2O emission have been reported in previous literature, but wastewater biological nitrification is accompanied by a dynamic process of dissolved oxygen (DO) consumption and pH reduction, it is more meaningful to study the synergistic effects between DO and pH on N2O production. In this study, the synergistic effects between DO and pH on N2O production were investigated with real domestic wastewater. The results showed that high DO levels and a high pH could improve the oxidation ratio of NH4+-N and the production ratio of NO2--N, while effectively reducing the accumulation ratio of N2O. The NH4+-N was a prerequisite for nitrifier denitrification; when NH4+-N was oxidized completely, there would be no N2O production and an even higher concentration of NO2- The pH factor is shown to directly affect N2O emission, although free ammonia and free nitrous acid which changed with pH had no correlation with N2O emission. There were two reasons: (1) pH can influence the flow direction of electrons afforded by NH2OH oxidation; at high pH, electrons were mainly used for combining H+ and O2 (O2+4H++4e-=2H2O), the accumulation of NO2- cannot be a result of denitrification, and a higher DO can get more electrons to prefer NO2- and (2) NH4+ was the prerequisite for NH2OH oxidation, since NH2OH oxidation process was the way to provide electrons for nitrifier denitrification.