ABSTRACT
3Biological phosphorus removal has become a reliable and well understood process for wastewater treatment. This chapter describes the historical development of the process and the most important microbiological, process engineering and modeling aspects. From a microbiological point of view the role of poly-hydroxy-alkanoate (PHA) as storage material in a dynamic process and the use of poly-phosphate (poly-P) as energy reserve are the most important aspects. From a process engineering point of view the study on BPR has shown that highly complex biological processes can be properly designed and controlled, having a good knowledge of the prevailing microbial processes. As far as the modeling aspect is concerned, there are two different modeling approaches for the simulation of BPR processes: one based on the metabolism of the bacteria (the “Delft model”) and the other, based on a black-box approach (ASM2). Presently, BPR models are sufficiently developed to be applied for the description of activated sludge processes. The combination of ASM 2 and the “Delft model” for aerobic and anoxic BPR for simulation of activated sludge systems seems to be very promising.
