Fe addition as a promising strategy to enhance the pollutant removal performance and mitigate the membrane fouling of a laboratory-scale membrane bioreactor treating sulfamethoxazole wastewater.

Membrane bioreactor (MBR) is a water treatment process combining membrane technologies with activated sludge, which is beneficial to the removal of antibiotics. However, with the extension of the operation cycle, its efficiency in treating antibiotic wastewater decreases and the membrane fouling intensifies. As the presence of Fe could improve pollutants removal, microbial activity and sludge properties, it was anticipated that the addition of Fe in MBR might promote the removal of antibiotics and reduce membrane fouling. The effects of Fe concentration on the removal of sulfamethoxazole (SMX) and membrane fouling were investigated in this work. The results revealed that the removal efficiencies of COD, TN, and SMX was 98%, 86%, and 70%, respectively, when 40 mg/L Fe was introduced into MBR with the influent SMX concentration of 1 mg/L. This performance was superior to that observed in the absence of Fe, which was 93%, 74%, and 53% for COD, TN, and SMX removal, respectively. Correspondingly, the membrane fouling rate decreased from 2.52 kPa/d to 1.03 kPa/d, demonstrating that Fe could mitigate membrane fouling. The exploration into membrane fouling mechanism demonstrated that the flocculation of activated sludge was enhanced and the protein (PN) content in the cake layer was significantly reduced. Concurrently, the repulsive energy barrier (XDLVO) between foulants and membrane surface was markedly increased. The study identified four SMX degradation pathways, i.e., N-S bond breaking, C-S bond breaking, N-O bond breaking, and benzene ring deamination. The toxicity levels of the degradation intermediates were determined to span from harmless to toxic as compared with SMX itself. This study offers new insights into the enhanced elimination of SMX through the MBR-Fe process and elucidates the mechanisms involved in mitigating membrane fouling, highlighting the potential of this process in degrading antibiotic wastewater.