Enhancement of Membrane Processes with Attached Growth Media
- Publisher:
- American Society of Civil Engineers
- Publication Type:
- Chapter
- Citation:
- Membrane Technology and Environmental Applications, 2012, 1, pp. 603-634
- Issue Date:
- 2012-01
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| Chapter 20 Enhancement of Membrane Processes with Attached Growth Media.pdf | Accepted version | 401.97 kB |
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The consumption of limited waste resources together with the need to comply with ever more stringent water quality standards, and the need to reuse water are the main impetus for the intensification of existing conventional water treatment processes. Moreover, current and impending legislation on wastewater treatment effluent has also led to the need for improved treatment processes capable of removing higher percentages of nutrients, suspended solids, bacteria, etc. (Kramne et al., 2005). During the last decades, the interest in the use of membrane technology has emerged in wastewater treatment as well as drinking water and process water production. This growth can be explained by a combination of (a) growing demand for water with high quality, (b) growing pressure to reuse wastewater, (b) better realibility and integrity of the membranes, (d) lower prices of membranes due to enhanced use, and (e) more stringent standards, e.g., in the drinking water industry (van de Bruggen et al., 2008). Therefore, membrane techniques (e.g., microfiltration (MF), ultrafiltration (DF), nanofiltration (NF) and reverse osmosis (RO)) in general and mebrance bioreactors (MBRs) in particular have been widely applied to wastewater reclamation and reuse for simultaneous organic and nutrient removal. Normally, there are two ways to begin water reuse: either retrofitting the current wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) facilities or constructing extra advanced processes after secondary treatment. Biological nutrients removal (BNR) processes modifying the current conventional WWTP is a typical example of retrofitting, while membrane filtration, carbon adsorption and ozonation are typically used for extra-installation the advanced treatment of secondary effluent (Baek and Chang, 2009). Especially, as eutrophication of the aquatic environment caused by nitrogen and phosphorus present in discharged effluent has become an unavoidable concern, the development of cost-effective and efficient BNR technology for wastewater treatment is highly promising to satisfy the stringent discharge standard (Li et al., 2003; Ahmed et al., 2007). Attached growth media have been widely used in practice for removal biodegradable organic matter and nutrients; their applications have undergone various degrees of modification and development. Among numerous BNR systems, two configurations of attached growth bioreactors have been drawing a lot of attention in terms of achieving simultaneous carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus removal. The first one is attached biofilm reactor which involves attached growth on the inner and outer surfaces of small carriers mobilized in suspension either pneumatically or mechanically, or immobilized in the reactor. The other one is aerated MBRs coupled with attached growth media, or associated with sequential anoxic/anaerobic reactors (Ngo et al., 2008; Guo et al., 2010). Attached growth assisted membrane hybrid systems has brought ever-increasing research interest to improve bioreactor perfonnance by process integration and process intensification.
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