MEMBRANE FOULING CONTROL IN INDUSTRIAL WASTEWATER TREATMENT

Abstract

Membrane bioreactor (MBR) is a promising technology for industrial wastewater treatment due to its inherent advantages compared with conventional activated sludge (CAS). However, membrane fouling is the main challenging issue restricting the widespread application of MBRs. The feasibility of two strategies to mitigate membrane fouling in MBRs treating pharmaceutical wastewater were investigated, i.e., coagulation-MBR and quorum quenching (QQ) technology. It was found that membrane filtration performance increased about 35% with the addition of ferric hydroxide, which attributed to the enlarged particle size, enhanced bacteria activity, reduced dissolved organic concentration and modification of bacteria community. Besides, dosing either Rhodococcus sp. BH4 or QQ consortiums (QQcs) which were isolated by using the dominant AHLs present in the targeted MBR could extent membrane filtration period effectively. The TMP increase was delayed by 68.7% by Rhodococcus sp. BH4, while only 31.3% was achieved by QQcs. Meanwhile, a robust and sensitive method was developed to simultaneously detect and quantify 11 derivatives of N-acyl homoserine lactones (AHLs) in MBR systems, which combines solid phase extraction (SPE) and liquid liquid extraction (LLE) (i.e., SPE-LLE).