Application of submerged membrane bioreactor for converting high strength wastewater into clean water

Abstract

The high biomass submerged membrane bioreactor (MBR) showed exceptionally high performance in organics and nutrients removal for a high strength industrial wastewater feed. During the 300 days of continuous operation, chemical oxygen demand (COD) values of the permeate fell to less than 10 mg-L-1 after just 100 days. This would represent an excellent organic reduction of 99%. It was found from the study that the biological process of the MBR was responsible for 90-98% of COD removal while the membrane separation contributed to further 2-10% of COD removal. Total nitrogen (TN) removal also showed high reductions. Quality of the permeate were better than local tapwater and typical clean water microfiltration effluent presented an exciting opportunity for the reuse or recycle instead of discharge into open waters.