Pentair develops low-fouling membranes to optimize anaerobic membrane bioreactor (AnMBR) performance

October 04, 2018 | Case Study

Anaerobic treatment technologies are widely used today in industry to treat challenging wastewaters containing difficult-to-treat organics (COD ranging from 5,000 to 100,000 ppm) and nutrients, both nitrates and phosphate, and where there is potential, for energy recovery through biogas production. 

AnMBR's advantage over aerobic counterparts is in treating higher-soluble and insoluble organic loads (including fats and oils), producing execllent quality effluent, above 98% COD reduction, and in some cases less than 50 ppm, promoting a culture of industrial resource recovery and reuse. It is also more effective at high temperatures and generates energy to offset operational costs. A key challenge, however, is in solids separations, as anaerobic sludge contains fluidized biomass that floats rather than floccing together as in an aerobic system. This is an issue when separating solids from clean effluent. Membrane fouling and cleaning can account for half the operational costs of MBRs. AnMBRs can operate submerged or in sidestream crossflow arrangement.