Membrane Biological Reactors: Theory, Modeling, Design, Management and Applications to Wastewater Reuse - Second Edition

Faisal I. Hai, Kazuo Yamamoto, Chung-Hak Lee, Faisal I. Hai, Kazuo Yamamoto, Chung-Hak Lee

• Publisher: IWA Publishing
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781780409184
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Environmental Science
• Index: Biological Sciences

The MBR market continues to experience a massive growth. The best practice in the field is constantly changing and unique quality requirements and management issues are regularly emerging. The second edition of Membrane Biological Reactors: Theory, Modeling, Design, Management and Applications to Wastewater Reuse comprehensively covers the salient features and emerging issues associated with the MBR technology. The book provides thorough coverage starting from biological aspects and fundamentals of membranes, via modeling and design concepts, to practitioners' perspective and good application examples.In the second edition, the chapters have been updated to cover the recently emerged issues. Particularly, the book presents the current status of the technology including market drivers/ restraints and development trend. Process fundamentals (both the biological and membrane components) have received in-depth coverage in the new edition. A new chapter has been added to provide a stronger focus on reuse applications in general and the decisive role of MBR in the entire reuse chain. The second edition also comes with a new chapter containing practical design problems to complement the concepts communicated throughout the book. Other distinguishing features of the new edition are coverage of novel developments and hybrid processes for specialised wastewaters, energy efficiency and sustainability of the process, aspects of MBR process automation and recent material on case studies.The new edition is a valuable reference to the academic and professional community and suitable for undergraduate and postgraduate teaching in Environmental Engineering, Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology.

© IWA Publishing 2019. Faisal I. Hai, Kazuo Yamamoto and Chung-Hak Lee Membrane Biological Reactors: Theory, Modeling, Design, Management and Applications to Wastewater Reuse DOI: 10.2166/9781780409177_0001

Chapter 1

Introduction to membrane biological reactors

Faisal I. Hai^1*, Kazuo Yamamoto^2,3,4 and Chung-Hak Lee⁵

¹Strategic Water Infrastructure Laboratory, School of Civil, Mining and Environmental Engineering, The University of Wollongong, Australia

²Environmental Risk Management and Quality Control Technology Laboratory, Environmental Science Center, University of Tokyo, Japan

³Research and Development Initiative, Chuo University, Japan

⁴Kindai University, Japan

⁵Water Environment Membrane Technology Laboratory, Seoul National University, Korea

^*Corresponding author: [email protected]

ABSTRACT

This chapter delineates the rationale of combining the membrane and bioreactor technologies and systematically introduces the membrane biological reactors that are the focus of this book. This is followed by a brief account of the history of the various uses of membranes in conjunction with bioreactors and how the initial formats led to the development of the present day commercialized ones. The relative advantages of membrane biological reactors over the conventional biological processes are presented. The current status of the membrane bioreactor (MBR) market is described and the drivers propelling its growth along with the constraints are highlighted. The trends in world-wide MBR research is succinctly presented in order to assess whether academic research has so far been able to maintain close relationship with the specific practical requirements in the industry.

1.1 MEMBRANE BIOLOGICAL REACTORS – DEFINITION AND APPLICATION

Membrane biological reactors refer to the technologies based on the combination of membranes and biological reactors for the treatment or resource recovery from wastewater. Combining membrane separation with biochemical conversion has led to a range of innovative environmental biotechnology applications, namely, biosolids separation, gas diffusion, extractive, biocatalytic, and electrochemical membrane biological reactors (Hai & Yamamoto, 2011; Hai et al., 2013; Judd, 2011). In biosolids separation membrane biological reactors, membranes reject the solid materials developed by the biological process to provide a clarified and disinfected product. Gas-diffusion membrane biological reactors facilitate efficient delivery of a gaseous oxidizing or reducing agents such as oxygen, hydrogen, or methane to microbial biofilms treating wastewater (Hwang et al., 2009). Extractive membrane biological reactors have been devised for the transfer of degradable organic pollutants from hostile industrial wastewaters, via a nonporous silicone membrane, to a nutrient medium for subsequent biodegradation (Livingston, 1994). Biocatalytic membrane biological reactors utilize enzymes or immobilized microbial cells for degradation of persistent xenobiotics or for synthesis of fine chemicals (Hai et al., 2013). Electrochemical membrane biological reactors make it possible to utilize organic compounds in wastewater for production of energy or chemicals (Logan & Rabaey, 2012).

Biosolids separation is, however, the most widely studied type and has found full-scale applications in many countries. Recent comprehensive reviews point to the vast majority of research on biosolid separation type applications, paralleling the commercial success in this field. In line with the current trend of research and commercial application, this book will focus on the biosolids separation membrane biological reactors, which, henceforth, will be denoted as membrane bioreactor (MBR) according to the common trend. However, Chapter 10 focuses on the remainder of the aforementioned types of membrane biological reactors that are currently in the research and development stage, but can potentially contribute to more efficient removal of pollutants and recovery of resources from wastewater. Discussion on other forms of membrane biological reactors such as that for waste gas treatment (Reij et al., 1998), is beyond the scope of this book.

Solid−liquid separation by membranes in MBRs combines clarification and filtration of a conventional activated sludge (CAS) process into a simplified, single-step process. Membranes are seldom used by themselves to filter untreated wastewater, since fouling prevents the establishment of a steady state and because water recovery is too low (Fuchs et al., 2005; Schrader et al., 2005). However, when used in conjunction with the biological process, it converts dissolved organic matter into suspended biomass, reducing membrane fouling and allowing recovery to be increased (Gallucci et al., 2011; Hai & Yamamoto, 2011). In addition, the membrane filtration process introduced into bioreactors not only replaces the settling unit for solid–liquid separation but also forms an absolute barrier to solids and bacteria and retain them in the process tank, giving rise to several advantages (see section 1.3) over the CAS process.

1.2 HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF BIOSOLIDS SEPARATION IN MBRS

The period between the 1960s and the 1980s is often regarded as being the golden age of membrane science (Judd, 2011). The crucial breakthrough was the development of the asymmetric cellulose acetate membrane for reverse osmosis by Loeb and Souriarajan in 1963 (Loeb & Sourirajan, 1964). This along with some other early-stage developments, as listed in Table 1.1, paved the way for the development of the present-day membranes for MBRs and still has an impact on academic research and industrial applications.

Table 1.1 Historical milestones leading to the development of present day porous membranes for MBR at a glance.

Milestone	Selected References
Fick’s phenomenological laws of diffusion	Fick (1855)
van’t Hoff’s (1887, 1888) osmotic pressure equation	van’t Hoff (1887, 1888)
Use of bovine heart membranes (1–50 nm) to separate soluble Acacia by Schmidt – arguably the first documented ultrafiltration (UF) experiment	Schmidt (1856)
Graham’s pioneering work in gas separation using both porous and dense membranes	Graham (1861, 1866)
First synthetic UF membranes preparation; introducing membrane bubble points test; proposing the term ‘ultrafilter’	Bechhold (1907)
‘Dry inversion’ method to produce porous collodion membrane in an industrial scale (leading to the establishment of the world’s first commercial microporous membrane supplier, Sartorius Werke GmbH in 1925)	Zsigmondy and Bachmann (1918, 1922)
Introduction of ‘vapour-induced phase separation’ formation method leading to establishment of Millipore Corporation in 1954	Goetz and Tsuneishi (1951)
Development of the higher-flux, asymmetric cellulose acetate membrane by ‘wet phase inversion’ or ‘non-solvent-induced phase separation’ (NIPS)	Loeb and Sourirajan (1964)
General applicability of new kinds of UF membranes prepared by using various polymers on an industrial scale (collaboration between Amicon Inc. collaborated with Dorr-Oliver Inc.)	Michaels (1963)
Commercialization of thermally induced phase separation (TIPS) microfiltration (MF) membranes (greater flux than NIPS membranes)	Castro (1981)
Radiation track etching method of membrane development (limited application in the manufacture of flat membrane due to its poor permeability and high cost)	Fleischer et al. (1969)
Development of the less expensive melt extrusion and cold-stretching method by Celanese Corp. in 1974	Druin et al. (...