WASTEWATER TREATMENT USING COMBINATION OF MBR EQUIPPED WITH NON-WOVEN FABRIC FILTER AND OYSTER-ZEOLITE COLUMN

A combination of the submerged membrane activated-sludge bioreactor(SMABR) equipped with non-woven fabric filter and oyster-zeolite (OZ) packed-bed adsorption column was studied to evaluate the advanced tertiary treatment of nitrogen and phosphorous. The non-woven filter module was submerged in the MBR and aeration was operated intermittently for an optimal wastewater treatment performance. Artificial wastewater with $COD_{Cr}$ of 220 mg/L, total nitrogen (T-N) of 45 mg/L, and total phosphorous (T-P) of 6 mg/L was used in this study. MLSS was maintained about $4,000\;{\sim}\;5,000\;mg/L$ throughout the experiments. The experiments were performed for 100-day with periodic non-woven filter washing. The results showed that $COD_{Cr}$ could be effectively removed in SMABR alone with over 94% removal efficiency. However, T-N and T-P removal efficiency was slightly lower than expected with SMABR alone. The permeate from SMABR was then passed through the OZ column for tertiary nutrients removal. The final effluent analysis confirmed that nutrients could be additionally removed resulting in over 87% and 46% removal efficiencies for T-N and T-P, respectively. The results of this study suggest that the waste oyster-shell can be effectively reclaimed as an adsorbent in advanced tertiary wastewater treatment processes in combination with SMABR equipped with non-woven fabric filter.