The nitrification capacity is the specific turnover of an activated sludge in (g NH4-N / kg oSS x d). For comparable boundary conditions, this number is an indicator of the number of nitrifying bacteria in the biomass in question.
An aerobic granular sludge (AGS) system which primarily reduces the specifically faster growing heterotrophic bacteria and enriches the slow growing nitrifying bacteria has a correspondingly higher nitrification performance. For municipal wastewater, the aerobic granular sludge (S::Select®) shows approximately a doubling of the specific capacity.
Since nitrification capacity is the bottleneck in the operation (and design) of an activated sludge plant, doubling the performance can be achieved by converting a suspended sludge into an aerobic granular sludge without the need for structural changes.


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