An aerated and fluidized bed membrane bioreactor for effective wastewater treatment with low membrane fouling
Type
ArticleAuthors
Ye, YaoliLabarge, Nicole
Kashima, Hiroyuki
Kim, Kyoung Yeol
Hong, Pei-Ying

Saikaly, Pascal

Logan, Bruce E.
KAUST Department
Biological and Environmental Sciences and Engineering (BESE) DivisionEnvironmental Science and Engineering Program
Water Desalination and Reuse Research Center (WDRC)
KAUST Grant Number
OSR-2015-SEED-2450-01Date
2016Permanent link to this record
http://hdl.handle.net/10754/622374
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
Anaerobic fluidized bed membrane bioreactors (AFMBRs) use granular activated carbon (GAC) particles suspended by recirculation to effectively treat low strength wastewaters (∼100–200 mg L−1, chemical oxygen demand, COD), but the effluent can contain dissolved methane. An aerobic fluidized bed membrane bioreactor (AOFMBR) was developed to avoid methane production and the need for wastewater recirculation by using rising air bubbles to suspend GAC particles. The performance of the AOFMBR was compared to an AFMBR and a conventional aerobic membrane bioreactor (AeMBR) for domestic wastewater treatment over 130 d at ambient temperatures (fixed hydraulic retention time of 1.3 h). The effluent of the AOFMBR had a COD of 20 ± 8 mg L−1, and a turbidity of <0.2 NTU, for low-COD influent (153 ± 19 and 214 ± 27 mg L−1), similar to the AeMBR and AFMBR. For the high-COD influent (299 ± 24 mg L−1), higher effluent CODs were obtained for the AeMBR (38 ± 9 mg L−1) and AFMBR (51 ± 11 mg L−1) than the AOFMBR (26 ± 6 mg L−1). Transmembrane pressure of the AOFMBR increased at 0.04 kPa d−1, which was 20% less than the AeMBR and 57% less than the AFMBR, at the low influent COD. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) analysis indicated a more uniform biofilm on the membrane in AOFMBR than that from the AeMBR biofilm, and no evidence of membrane damage. High similarity was found between communities in the suspended sludge in the AOFMBR and AeMBR (square-root transformed Bray–Curtis similarity, SRBCS, 0.69). Communities on the GAC and suspended sludge were dissimilar in the AOFMBR (SRBCS, 0.52), but clustered in the AFMBR (SRBCS, 0.63).Citation
Ye Y, LaBarge N, Kashima H, Kim K-Y, Hong P-Y, et al. (2016) An aerated and fluidized bed membrane bioreactor for effective wastewater treatment with low membrane fouling. Environ Sci: Water Res Technol 2: 994–1003. Available: http://dx.doi.org/10.1039/c6ew00203j.Sponsors
This work was supported by Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program (SERDP), and Award OSR-2015- SEED-2450-01 from the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). We also would like to thank John J. Cantolina, the technologist from Huck institute of the Life Sciences, the Pennsylvania State University for his help in SEM imaging.Publisher
Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC)Additional Links
http://pubs.rsc.org/en/Content/ArticleLanding/2016/EW/C6EW00203Jae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1039/c6ew00203j