Development of Fouling-Control Strategy for Ceramic Membrane Bioreactor Applied in Partial Nitrification Process

A lab-scale ceramic membrane bioreactor (MBR) with active membrane-fouling control system was developed for the partial nitrification (PN) process. The in situ membrane cleaning method was applied to remove the contaminants on the surface of the membrane with no interruption of the wastewater treatment. The results showed that the device increased critical flux and reduced gel layer resistance (Rg) and internal resistance (Ri) of the flat-sheet ceramic membrane by inhibiting the formation of the cake layer. In long-term experiments, nitrite oxidizing bacteria (NOB) was successfully suppressed, and nitrite accumulation rate (NAR) was achieved at a high level, up to 90.09%; the effluent NO2−-N/NH4+-N was maintained in balance dynamically with an average ratio of ~1.30, which would be beneficial to the proliferation of Anammox bacteria and the following autotrophic nitrogen removal (ANR) process. Moreover, with the assistance of in situ cleaning, energy input from aeration was significantly reduced, while over aeration was avoided for more stable PN performance.