Abstract
This study was carried out on a membrane bioreactor (MBR) facilitated with an electric field provided by a microbial fuel cell (MFC), which effectively reduced membrane contamination and extended the operation time of the MBR from 18 to 24 days. To understand the theory of membrane fouling in the MFC-MBR, a novel model based on the operation of the MFC-MBR was proposed with the modification of the classical filtration models to assess the membrane fouling. With this model, a two-phase membrane fouling development was observed, which was initially dominated by the intermediate-blocking model and then gradually changed to cake filtration. In the combined model of two-phase development, fouling was significantly mitigated by the electric field in phase 1, but its function was barely observed in phase 2. The combined model fit well with the experimental data, which could predict membrane fouling in the application of the MFC-MBR.
Highlights
The recently developed membrane bioreactor (MBR) attracts much attention in water treatment because of its advantages of good effluent, compact facilities, and less sludge production (Iorhemen et al, 2017; Nghiem et al, 2017)
The complicated membrane fouling process in the microbial fuel cell (MFC)-MBR was unable to be explained with any of the four established filtration models but could be interpreted by the combined model of intermediate blocking and cake layer formation, which was consistent with the report of Alexandra et al in which the model fits better in all circumstances when cake formation theory was combined with intermediate, standard- or completeblocking theory in an anaerobic MBR (Alexandra et al, 2018)
The C-MBR and MFC-MBR were run for 18 and 24 days, respectively, until trans-membrane pressure (TMP) reached 30 kPa, indicating that running time might be enhanced and the membrane fouling could be mitigated in the MFC-MBR system
Summary
The recently developed membrane bioreactor (MBR) attracts much attention in water treatment because of its advantages of good effluent, compact facilities, and less sludge production (Iorhemen et al, 2017; Nghiem et al, 2017). Kirschner et al found that cross-flow filtration of soybean oil emulsion under constant flux was best described by the combined model of intermediate blocking and cake-layer formation (Kirschner et al, 2019) In their studies, the behavior of particles in membrane fouling included two aspects. A novel membrane fouling mechanism was developed in the MFC-MBR by combining the intermediate-blocking and cake-layer formation models. With these models, the transmembrane pressure and the availability of the membrane area were simulated at a constant filtration flow rate, and the mechanism for reduction of membrane fouling was proposed
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