The occurrence of composts of nitrogen above the legal limits has been causing serious pollution problems in water receptor bodies. The biological process for removal of these substances commonly found in the ammoniacal nitrogen form is known as nitrification. The present study had as its objective the evaluation of the effects of the reaction time (TR) and of the aeration on the removal efficiency of the ammoniacal nitrogen and on the conversion of the ammoniacal nitrogen to nitrate in a nitrification process of the tilapia slaughterhouse effluent in sequential batch reactor with biofilm. The experiment was performed using two reaction times (6 and 12 h) and two levels of air flow (3 and 6 L min-1), four treatments, starting from the combination of these two variables, were evaluated in an experimental planning of the factorial 2² type: being: T4 (QAr = 3 L min-1 and TR = 6); T2 (QAr = 6 L min-1 and TR = 6), T3 (QAr = 3 L min-1 and TR = 12) and T1 (QAr = 6 L min-1 and TR = 12), and four repetitions. The most significant results were obtained for treatment T4, where the efficiency for conversion of the ammoniacal nitrogen to nitrate obtained was 57.27 ± 27.05 and removal of the ammoniacal nitrogen was 81.90% ± 3.80.
aeration; reaction time; RBS; nitrogen removal
