Biological Nitrogen Removal in Moving Bed Biofilm Reactor Using Ibuprofen as Carbon Source

This study investigates removal of total nitrogen (TN) in moving bed biofilm reactor (MBBR) supported with high-density polyethylene for biofilm formation and ibuprofen (IBU) as a carbon source. At first, the microorganisms have been acclimated for 45 days. In the optimum condition, TN removal of more than 80% was reached. Optimization results of simultaneous removal of IBU and TN showed that the obtained removal efficiencies for IBU and TN are close together and the correlation coefficients have high values. The obtained results show that MBBR bioreactor could remove 72.03 % IBU and 81.1 % TN at 145.15 h and TN concentration of 156.37 mg/L. Biodegradation constant (k(biol)) values were varying from 0.4 to 0.009 L/g biomass.d, which represents that IBU is a hard biodegradable or persistent substance. This study demonstrated that the proposed MBBR is highly effective for the simultaneous removal of IBU and TN in wastewater.