Recovery of organic matters in wastewater by self-forming dynamic membrane bioreactor: Performance and membrane fouling

Abstract

Formation process and fouling characteristics of the dynamic membrane were studied in a modified self-forming dynamic membrane bioreactor (SF-DMBR) for recovering the organic matters in wastewater, and the performance of this SF-DMBR was investigated. Results indicated that 80% of the organic matters in wastewater could be quickly recovered under continuous operation. Furthermore, the evolutions of the fouling components were determined during the formation and development processes of dynamic membrane. After the long-term operation, the decreases of protein concentration, accompanying with the increases of polysaccharides and microorganisms contents due to special operating conditions, were interestingly observed in the sludge of membrane surface. This could explain why membrane fouling was much weak. Therefore, though high membrane fluxes at 50–150 L/(m2·h) were adopted in this study, the reactor can still obtain a long-term stable operation and the operating cycle reached as long as 8 days. Finally, membrane fouling process was described by combined models.