Anoxic activated sludge monitoring with combined nitrate and titrimetric measurements

An experimental procedure for anoxic activated sludge monitoring with combined nitrate and titrimetric measurements is proposed and evaluated successfully with two known carbon sources, acetate and dextrose. For nitrate measurements an ion-selective nitrate electrode is applied to allow for frequent measurements, and thereby the possibility for detailed determination of the denitrification biokinetics. An internal nitrate electrode calibration is implemented in the experiments to avoid the often-encountered electrode drift problem. It was observed that the best experimental design was with the carbon source in excess, since excess nitrate provoked nitrite build-up thereby complicating the data interpretation. A conceptual model could quantitatively describe the experimental observations and thus link the experimentally measured proton production with the consumption of electron acceptor and carbon source during denitrification.