The discharge of slaughterhouse wastewater (SWW) is increasing and its wastewater has to be treated thoroughly to avoid the eutrophication.The hybrid zeolite-based ion-exchange and sulfur autotrophic denitrification (Ⅸ-AD) process was developed to advanced treat SWW after traditional secondary biological process.Compared with traditional sulfur oxi-dizing denitrification (SOD),this study found that Ⅸ-AD column showed:(1) stronger ability to resist NO3-pollution load,(2) lower SO42-productivity,and (3) higher microbial diver-sity and richness.Liaoning zeolites addition guaranteed not only the standard discharge of NH4+-N,but also the denitrification performance and effluent TN.Especially,when the ahead secondary biological treatment process run at the ultra-high load,NO3-N removal efficiency for Ⅸ-AD column was still ~100%,whereas only 64.2% for control SOD column.The corresponding average effluent TN concentrations for Ⅸ-AD and SOD columns were 5.89 and 65.55 mg/L,respectively.Therefore,Ⅸ-AD is a promising technology for advanced SWW treatment and should be widely researched and popularized.