Osman Aisyah, Mat Nawi Normi Izati, Samsuri Shafirah, Bilad Muhammad Roil, Shamsuddin Norazanita, Khan Asim Laeeq, Jaafar Juhana, Nordin Nik Abdul Hadi
Chemical Engineering Department, Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS, Seri Iskandar, Perak 32610, Malaysia.
Faculty of Integrated Technologies, Universiti Brunei Darussalam, Jalan Tungku Link BE1410, Brunei.
Polymers (Basel). 2020 Feb 12;12(2):432. doi: 10.3390/polym12020432.
A membrane bioreactor enhances the overall biological performance of a conventional activated sludge system for wastewater treatment by producing high-quality effluent suitable for reuse. However, membrane fouling hinders the widespread application of membrane bioreactors by reducing the hydraulic performance, shortening membrane lifespan, and increasing the operational costs for membrane fouling management. This study assesses the combined effect of membrane surface corrugation and a tilted panel in enhancing the impact of air bubbling for membrane fouling control in activated sludge filtration, applicable for membrane bioreactors. The filterability performance of such a system was further tested under variable parameters: Filtration cycle, aeration rate, and intermittent aeration. Results show that a combination of surface corrugation and panel tilting enhances the impact of aeration and leads to 87% permeance increment. The results of the parametric study shows that the highest permeance was achieved under short filtration-relaxation cycle of 5 min, high aeration rate of 1.5 L/min, and short switching period of 2.5 min, to yield the permeances of 465 ± 18, 447 ± 2, and 369 ± 9 L/(mh bar), respectively. The high permeances lead to higher operational flux that helps to lower the membrane area as well as energy consumption. Initial estimation of the fully aerated system yields the energy input of 0.152 kWh/m, much lower than data from the full-scale references of <0.4 kWh/m. Further energy savings and a lower system footprint can still be achieved by applying the two-sided panel with a switching system, which will be addressed in the future.
膜生物反应器通过产生适合回用的高质量出水，提高了传统活性污泥法污水处理系统的整体生物性能。然而，膜污染会降低水力性能、缩短膜寿命并增加膜污染管理的运营成本，从而阻碍了膜生物反应器的广泛应用。本研究评估了膜表面波纹和倾斜面板在增强曝气对活性污泥过滤中膜污染控制影响方面的综合作用，该方法适用于膜生物反应器。在可变参数下进一步测试了该系统的过滤性能：过滤周期、曝气速率和间歇曝气。结果表明，表面波纹和面板倾斜相结合可增强曝气效果，使通量提高87%。参数研究结果表明，在5分钟的短过滤-松弛周期、1.5升/分钟的高曝气速率和2.5分钟的短切换周期下可实现最高通量，通量分别为465±18、447±2和369±9升/(平方米·小时·巴)。高通量导致更高的运行通量，有助于减小膜面积并降低能耗。对全曝气系统的初步估计得出能量输入为0.152千瓦时/立方米，远低于<0.4千瓦时/立方米的全尺寸参考数据。通过应用带有切换系统的双侧面板仍可进一步节省能源并减小系统占地面积，这将在未来进行探讨。
