• Proceedings of the Membrane Society of Korea Conference
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• 2004.11a
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• pp.233-236
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• 2004

• Journal of Korean Society on Water Environment
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.322-328
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• 2011

This study was performed to investigate the characteristics of nutrient removal of municipal wastewater in the membrane bioreactor system with the different types of membrane. Membrane bioreactor consists of three reactors such as two intermittent anaerobic and the submerged membrane aerobic reactor with flat sheet and hollow fiber membrane, respectively. The removal efficiencies of $COD_{cr}$, BOD, SS, TN and TP on the flat sheet membrane bioreactor were 94.3%, 99.0%, 99.9%, 70.3% and 63.1%, respectively. In addition, The removal efficiencies of $COD_{cr}$, BOD, SS, TN and TP on the hollow fiber membrane bioreactor were 94.0%, 99.3%, 99.9%, 69.9% and 66.9%, respectively. The estimated true biomass yield, specific denitrification rate (SDNR), specific nitrification rate (SNR) and phosphorus removal content on the flat sheet membrane bioreactor were $0.33kgVSS/kgBOD{\cdot}d$, $0.043mgNO_3-N/mgVSS{\cdot}d$, $0.031mgNH_4-N/mgVSS{\cdot}d$, and 0.144 kgP/d, respectively. In addition, the estimated true biomass yield, specific denitrification rate (SDNR), specific nitrification rate (SNR) and phosphorus removal content on the hollow fiber membrane bioreactor were $0.30kgVSS/kgBOD{\cdot}d$, $0.067mgNO_3-N/mgVSS{\cdot}d$, $0.028mgNH_4-N/mgVSS{\cdot}d$, and 0.121 kgP/d, respectively. There was little difference between the flat sheet and hollow fiber on the nutrient removal efficiencies except SNR and SDNR. These differences between them were caused by the air demand to prevent the membrane fouling. The flux and oxygen demand for air scouring were $19.0L/m^2/hr$ and $2.28m^3/min$ for the flat sheet membrane, and $20.7L/m^2/hr$ and $1.77m^3/min$ for the hollow fiber membrane on an average.

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.18 no.5
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• pp.619-627
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• 2004

Purposes of this study were to examine closely the extracellular polymeric substances (EPS) which was a membrane fouling contaminant, to control detected EPS by powdered activated carbon (PAC) dosage etc. and to evaluate the possibility of practical reuse facility. With high removal efficiency of general pollutants, when the PAC is added to MBR, improvement of removal efficiency of $COD_{cr}$, and color was expected and treated wastewater can be reused. It was judged that the correlation between EPS and membrane fouling was very high. Carbohydrate and DNA in the EPS were judged to be cause of membrane fouling. If EPS could be controled, not only membrane fouling would be decreased but also operation time would be extended. In experiment of powdered activated carbon (PAC), characteristics of the best PAC for membrane fouling control were the particle size of $7{\mu}m$, lodine Number of 1,050, surface area of peat of $1,150m^2/g$. In lab test, operation time of MBR by PAC dosage of 200mg/gVSS was longer than one of MBR by without PAC dosage. Because EPS, especially carbohydrate and DNA, was controled successfully by PAC, membrane fouling in MBR could be decreased.

• Journal of Environmental Science International
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• v.12 no.10
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• pp.1095-1100
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• 2003

In this study, it was performed using submerged nonwoven bioreactor(SNBR) for removal of organic matter, nitrogen and phosphate under different aeration intervals(intermittent aeration). We applied the SNBR at the cheap nonwoven fiber module instead of the expensive membrane. The SUBR was mainly made up of an activated sludge reactor and a transverse flow nonwoven module, with an innovative configuration being in application between them. In case of sewage, the aeration conditions experimented consist of continuous aeration and 60min/60min, 120min/60min, 120min/120min of aeration/nonaeration time intervals, respectively. In case of landfill leachate, the intermittent aeration condition was 120min/120min at aeration/nonaeration. Consequently, a high COD removal rate (about 94%) was achieved in sewage and leachate. Although nutrient removal rate was relatively high without any additional chemicals.

• Membrane Journal
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.289-297
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• 2004

In this study, membranes were coupled to a sequencing batch reactor for simultaneous removal of organic matter and nitrogen, and the influences of MLSS (mixed liquor suspended solid) concentration and the sludge loading rate on membrane fouling and bioactivity were investigated. The amount of membrane fouling slightly increased with MLSS concentration at both non-aeration and aeration conditions, but effect of MLSS concentration was more significant at aeration condition. Although the effect of MLSS concentration on membrane fouling was found to be insignificant at low concentration level, extremely low sludge loading, which were generated by the maintenance of large amount of biomass in the reactor, caused severe membrane fouling, and air scouring effect decreased significantly in this condition. Specific bioactivity was constantly reduced as sludge loading rate decreased. In spite of high MLSS concentration over 17,000 mg/L, the activity of the reactor decreased at extremely low sludge loading rate presumably due to the lower oxygen transfer and the competition of biomass to deficient substrate.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.16 no.6
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• pp.863-869
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• 2006

The behavior of submerged membrane bioreactor (SMBR) filtration systems utilizing rapid air backpulsing as a cleaning technique to remove reversible foulants was investigated using a genetic algorithm (GA). A customized genetic algorithm with suitable genetic operators was used to generate optimal time profiles. From experiments utilizing short and long periods of forward and reverse filtration, various experimental process parameters were determined. The GA indicated that the optimal values for the net flux fell between 263-270 LMH when the forward filtration time ($t_f$) was 30-37 s and the backward filtration time ($t_b$) was 0.19-0.27 s. The experimental data confirmed the optimal backpulse duration and frequency that maximized the net flux, which represented a four-fold improvement in 24-h backpulsing experiments compared with the absence of backpulsing. Consequently, the identification of a region of feasible parameters and nonlinear flux optimization were both successfully performed by the genetic algorithm, meaning the genetic algorithm-based optimization proved to be useful for solving SMBR flux optimization problems.

• Membrane and Water Treatment
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.179-189
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• 2019

This study aimed to investigate the effect of temperature and solid retention time (SRT) on membrane fouling in a membrane bioreactors (MBRs). For this purpose, a lab-scale submerged MBR system was used. This system operated at two SRTs of 15 and 5 days, three various temperatures (20, 25 and $30^{\circ}C$) and hydraulic retention time (HRT) of 8 h. The results indicated that decreased the cake layer resistance and increased particles size of foulant due to increasing temperature and SRT. Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) analysis show that the cake layer formed on the membrane surface, contained high levels of proteins and especially polysaccharides in extracellular polymeric substances (EPS) but absorbance intensity of EPS functional groups decreased with temperature and SRT. EEM analysis showed that the peak on the range of Ex/Em=220-240/350-400 in SRT of 15 and temperature of $30^{\circ}C$ indicates the presence of fulvic acid in the cake. In addition, as the temperature rise from 20 to $30^{\circ}C$, concentration of soluble microbial products (SMP) increased and COD removal reached 89%. Furthermore, the rate of membrane fouling was found to increase with decreasing temperature and SRT.

• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.109-113
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• 2009

This study was performed to investigate the characteristics of nutrient removal of municipal wastewater in membrane bioreactor system. Membrane bioreactor consists of four reactors such as the anaerobic, the stabilization, the anoxic and the submerged membrane aerobic reactor with two internal recycles. The hydraulic retention time (HRT), sludge retention time (SRT) and flux were 6.2 h, 34.1 days and 19.6 L/$m^2$/hr (LMH), respectively. The removal efficiency of $COD_{Cr}$, SS, TN and TP were 94.3%, 99.9%, 69.4%, and 74.6%, respectively. The estimated true biomass yield, specific denitrification rate (SDNR), specific nitrification rate (SNR), specific phosphorus release rate (SPRR) and specific phosphorus uptake rate (SPUR) were 0.653 kgVSS/kgBOD/d, 0.044 $mgNO_3$-N/mgVSS/d, 0.035 $mgNH_4$-N/mgVSS/d, 51.0 mgP/gVSS/d and 5.4 mgP/gVSS/d, respectively. The contents of nitrogen and phosphorus of biomass were 8.86% and 3.5% on an average.

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.122-127
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• 2006

The aim of this study was to investigate the characteristics of membrane fouling caused by soluble organic materials in a membrane bioreactor process. For the removal of filterable organic materials (FOC) smaller than $1{\mu}m$, coagulants and activated carbon were added. A membrane bioreactor using a submerged $17{\mu}m$ metal sieve was operated in laboratory scale to examine the possibility of membrane fouling control. As the dosage of GAC and coagulant increased, the residual FOC concentration decreased and the permeate flow rate increased markedly. The permeate flux increased with an increased PACl addition at the range from 0 to 50 mg/l. At coagulant dosage of 27mg/l, the removal of FOC was about 46% and the flux increased to 3.5 times compared to the case without PACl addition. The permeate flux increased gradually with an increase in GAC dosage. At GAC dosage of 50mg/L, the permeate flux was about 2 times higher compared that for raw water. The particle in the range of $0.1{\sim}1.0{\mu}m$ were removed effectively by the addition of GAC and coagulant. Higher osage of GAC and coagulant, led to higher removal of FOC. A different set of experiments was also performed to investigate the effect of pretreatment on the permeation ability of MBR system using the metal sieve membrane. After 40 hours of operation, the permeate flux was about 1,000 ($L/m^2-hr$), which is 20 times higher compared to the results in literature. It is likely that combined pretreatment using coagulant and activated carbon was the most effective to resolve membrane fouling problems. Moreover, the continuous operations could be successful by applying this pretreatment method.

• Membrane and Water Treatment
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• v.6 no.6
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• pp.501-512
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• 2015

A laboratory-scale submerged membrane bioreactor (MBR) was continuously operated for 100 d at an infinite sludge retention time (SRT) with the aim of identifying possible relation between the filterability of mixed liquor and sludge properties, such as extracellular polymeric substances (EPS), soluble microbial products (SMP), viscosity of mixed liquor, zeta potential of flocs and particle size distributions (PSD). Research results confirmed that MBR can operate with a complete sludge retention ensuring good treatment performances for COD and $NH_3-N$. However, the long term operation (about 40 d) of MBR with no sludge discharge had a negative influence on sludge filterability, and an increase in membrane fouling rates with the time was observed. There as a strong correlation between the sludge filterability and the fouling rate. Among the different sludge properties parameters, the concentration SMP and EPS had a more closely correlation with the sludge filterability. The concentrations of SMP, especially SMP with MW above 10 kDa, had a strong direct correlation to the filterability of mixed sludge. The protein fractions in EPS were biodegradable and available for microorganism metabolism after about 60 days, and the carbohydrates in EPS had a significantly negative effect on sludge filterability in MBR at an infinite SRT.