ORIGINAL RESEARCH PAPER Biodegradation of amine waste generated from post-combustion CO 2 capture in a moving bed biofilm treatment system Ingrid Hauser • Aslak Einbu • Kjetill Østgaard • Hallvard F. Svendsen • Francisco J. Cervantes Received: 21 August 2012 / Accepted: 12 October 2012 / Published online: 30 October 2012 Ó Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2012 Abstract Nitrogen and organic matter removal from reclaimer waste of a monoethanolamine (MEA) based CO 2 -capture plant was demonstrated in a pre-denitri- fication biofilm system. The reclaimer waste was generated from a 30 % (w/w) MEA solvent used for capturing CO 2 from flue gas from a coal-fired power plant. MEA, N-(2-hydroxylethyl)glycine (HEGly) and 2-hydroxyethylformamide (HEF) were the major contaminants treated. Hydrolysis of MEA to ammonia and further oxidation of organic intermediates readily occurred in the pre-denitrification system with a hydraulic retention time of 7 h. The biofilm system achieved 98 ± 1 % removal of MEA and 72 ± 16 % removal of total nitrogen. This is the first demonstra- tion of efficient biodegradation of real amine waste from a post-combustion CO 2 capture facility by pre- denitrification without external electron donor. Keywords Biodegradation Á Carbon capture and storage Á Denitrification Á Monoethanolamine Á Nitrification Introduction CO 2 capture and storage (CCS) is a technology being developed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere while allowing continued use of fossil fuel. The principle of this technology is to capture the CO 2 arising from large point sources, such as fossil fuel-fired power plants, to transport it and finally store it safely in an underground geological formation. In an amine based post-combustion CO 2 capture plant, CO 2 is removed by a chemical absorption process by exposing a flue gas stream to an aqueous amine solution (Reynolds et al. 2012). A most widely used solvent for chemical absorption is an aqueous solution I. Hauser (&) Á K. Østgaard Á F. J. Cervantes Department of Biotechnology, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), 7491 Trondheim, Norway e-mail: ingrid.hauser@ntnu.no K. Østgaard e-mail: kjetill.ostgaard@biotech.ntnu.no F. J. Cervantes e-mail: fjcervantes@ipicyt.edu.mx A. Einbu SINTEF Materials and Chemistry, 7465 Trondheim, Norway e-mail: aslak.einbu@sintef.no H. F. Svendsen Department of Chemical Engineering, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), 7491 Trondheim, Norway e-mail: hallvard.svendsen@chemeng.ntnu.no F. J. Cervantes Divisio ´n de Ciencias Ambientales, Instituto Potosino de Investigacio ´n Cientı ´fica y Tecnolo ´gica (IPICyT), Camino a la Presa San Jose ´ 2055, Col. Lomas 4 a . Seccio ´n, C. P., 78216 San Luis Potosı ´, SLP, Mexico 123 Biotechnol Lett (2013) 35:219–224 DOI 10.1007/s10529-012-1073-6