Patent 7442539 was granted and assigned to Hitachi on October, 2008 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
The present invention can feed substrates without waste to generate seed sludge with high bacterial cell concentrations and can start up operation within a short time, in cultivating anaerobic ammonium oxidizing bacteria with ammonium and nitrite as substrates. Equipment for cultivating anaerobic ammonium-oxidizing bacteria, which cultivates, in a cultivation tank, novel anaerobic ammonium-oxidizing bacteria that anaerobically denitrify nitrite and ammonium used as substrates, comprises an ammonium feed device which feeds ammonium at a given concentration into the cultivation tank, a nitrite feed device which feeds nitrite at a given concentration into the cultivation tank, and a control device which controls a feed rate Y of the substrate.