Fouling Mitigation and Wastewater Treatment Enhancement through the Application of an Electro Moving Bed Membrane Bioreactor (eMB-MBR).

Jessa Millanar-Marfa,Florencio Ballesteros,Mark De Luna,Vincenzo Naddeo,Vincenzo Belgiorno,Laura Borea

doi:10.3390/membranes8040116

Jessa Millanar-Marfa, Florencio Ballesteros + Show 4 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/membranes8040116

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Abstract

High operational cost due to membrane fouling propensity remains a major drawback for the widespread application of membrane bioreactor (MBR) technology. As a result, studies on membrane fouling mitigation through the application of integrated processes have been widely explored. In this work, the combined application of electrochemical processes and moving bed biofilm reactor (MBBR) technology within an MBR at laboratory scale was performed by applying an intermittent voltage of 3 V/cm to a reactor filled with 30% carriers. The treatment efficiency of the electro moving bed membrane bioreactor (eMB-MBR) technology in terms of ammonium nitrogen (NH4-N) and orthophosphate (PO4-P) removal significantly improved from 49.8% and 76.7% in the moving bed membrane bioreactor (MB-MBR) control system to 55% and 98.7% in the eMB-MBR, respectively. Additionally, concentrations of known fouling precursors and membrane fouling rate were noticeably lower in the eMB-MBR system as compared to the control system. Hence, this study successfully demonstrated an innovative and effective technology (i.e., eMB-MBR) to improve MBR performance in terms of both conventional contaminant removal and fouling mitigation.

Highlights

Membrane bioreactor (MBR) technology which involves the integration of membrane filtration with biological treatment has been widely investigated and deemed as a promising alternative to conventional wastewater treatment due to its numerous advantages [1,2,3]
The reactor worked in two successive runs, each lasting for approximately 30 days: in the first run as an MB-membrane bioreactor (MBR) reactor and in the second run as an electro moving bed membrane bioreactor (eMB-MBR) reactor with the application of electrochemical processes
The membrane module used for all the runs was the ZeeWeed® -1 (ZW-1, Zenon Europe Kft, Oroszlany, Hungary) submerged polyvinylidene flouride (PVDF) hollow fiber ultrafiltration membrane module with a nominal pore diameter of 0.04 μm and an effective membrane surface area of 0.047 m2 placed in the center of the reactor

Summary

Introduction

Membrane bioreactor (MBR) technology which involves the integration of membrane filtration with biological treatment has been widely investigated and deemed as a promising alternative to conventional wastewater treatment due to its numerous advantages [1,2,3]. The hydrophobic nature of commonly manufactured membranes makes it prone to membrane fouling which negatively impacts MBR efficiency [4] and increases operational and maintenance (O&M) costs. 34% of O&M costs are attributed to the energy requirement, mainly for pumping and the aeration of MBR for fouling mitigation, and roughly 28% of the costs are attributed to membrane replacement [2,5]. An effective process for fouling mitigation in MBR technology is necessary to expand its applications [6,7]

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