Anaerobic MBR technology for treating municipal wastewater at ambient temperatures

An innovative way to treat municipal wastewater and produce energy at the same time is anaerobic treatment. Anaerobic processes are traditionally used for high-strength wastewater or municipal sludge treatment and only recently have been applied for the treatment of low strength municipal wastewater To investigate the performance of anaerobic wastewater treatment through the incorporation of membrane technology, a 40 L laboratory scale Anaerobic Membrane Bioreactor (AnMBR) with a flat sheet submerged membrane along with a 40 L reservoir for trapping and measuring the biogas produced have been installed and set in operation. The scope of this study is to examine, through long term bench scale experiments, the impact that different temperatures and also different operating conditions have on the efficiency of AnMBR in order to identify the possibility of integrating this technology into Wastewater Treatment Plants (WWTPs). This paper evaluates the efficiency of AnMBR in the temperature range 14-26 °C, operating at three different hydraulic retention times (HRTs). The three different HRTs examined were 2 d, 1 d and 12 h. Each HRT is divided into two different temperature ranges. As the HRT decreased the effluent quality decreased and the membrane fouled more rapidly. AnMBR was able to produce permeate water with an average COD of 51 ± 8 mg L^-1 at an HRT of 2 d during the summer period with an average temperature of 24 °C. The effluent COD increased to 67 ± 10 mg L^-1 and reached 91 ± 5 mg L^-1 for HRT 1 d and 12 h respectively for the same temperature range.