Development of an extended ASM3 model for predicting the nitrous oxide emissions in a full-scale wastewater treatment plant

An Activated Sludge Model #3 (ASM3)-based, pseudo-mechanistic model describing nitrous oxide (N2O) production was created in this study to provide more insight into the dynamics of N2O production, consumption, and emissions at a full-scale wastewater treatment plant (WWTP). N2O emissions at the studied WWTP are monitored throughout the plant with an FT-IR analyzer, while the developed model encountered N2O production in the biological reactors via both ammonia oxidizing bacteria (AOB) nitrification and heterotrophic denitrifiers. Additionally, the stripping of N2O was included by applying a KLa-based approach that has not been widely used before. The objective was to extend the existing ASM3-based model of the plant and assess how well the full-scale emissions could be predicted with the selected model. The validity and applicability of the model were tested by comparing the simulation results with the comprehensive online data. The results show that the ASM3-based model can be successfully extended and applied to modelling N2O production and emissions at a full-scale WWTP. These results demonstrate that the biological reactor can explain most of the N2O emissions at the plant, but a significant proportion of the liquid-phase N2O is further transferred during the process.