Air lift relevance in a side-stream MBR system

Abstract

Nowadays, two main MBR configurations are developed in wastewater treatment (Fig. 1a and b). The former is based on a side stream membrane module position, it is generally developed for the industrial wastewater treatment because of its compactness even if it requires more energy due to the necessity of using high suspension flow rate recycles throughout the membrane module to minimise fouling rates [1]. With this configuration the membrane maintenance is easy because of the side stream position of the membrane module relatively to the bioreactor. The second configuration is based on the immersion of membrane module directly inside the bioreactor. This configuration is more extensive because of functioning under low transmembrane pressure, TMP, and also requires low energy requirement because of using air fluid as turbulence supply [2]. Nevertheless, when some drastic membrane fouling or module clogging occurs, the cleaning protocol obliges to more difficult maintenance [3]. 2. Theory and experimental