Optimization of denitrification process in treating wastewater containing nitrate nitrogen

Nitrate-nitrogen (NO₃⁻-N) can be a source of the adverse implications to the groundwater. Thus, treatment of wastewater containing NO via denitrification is important to alleviate the deleterious effect of NO₃⁻-N. This study reported the optimization of glucose and sucrose mixture served as a carbon source to enhance the process of denitrification. Batch reactors were set up according to the design by central composite design (CCD) and analysis of variance (ANOVA) was applied to access the reliability of the results. The ANOVA analysis indicated that the quadratic model was suitable to predict the NO₃⁻-N removal efficiency based on the interactive factors of glucose and sucrose mixture. The contour and three dimensional response surface plots were used to determine and analyse the optimum interaction effect of factors and the resulted response, i.e., the maximum removal of NO₃⁻-N. Accordingly, the maximum removal of NO₃⁻-N was attained at 64.86% at the glucose and sucrose mixture ratios of 2.00 and 1.69, respectively.