Vacuum sewerage system (VSS) is an ecological wastewater collection system in which negative pressure difference in pipelines is used to transport sewage gradually to vacuum station for centralized treatment. Classification and application areas of VSSs were reviewed. Various vacuum generators in vacuum stations were compared. Types and key technologies of user terminals in VSSs were presented. Conveying mechanism of vacuum pipelines was illustrated. The way to discharge sewage from VSSs was introduced.

To solve the problem of eutrophication in receiving water, a novel Membrane Bioreactor (MBR) with combined configuration was designed for municipal wastewater treatment and reclamation. By dividing bioreactor into three zones, the combined MBR operated under anoxic, anaerobic and aerobic conditions. It provided optimum conditions for nitrification, denitrifying and phosphate accumulating bacterial growth which resulted in high biological nutrient removal rate directly. The operational performance of combined MBR pilot plant showed that it exhibited high nutrient removal rate on Chemical oxygen demand (CODcr), total nitrogen (TN) and total phosphorus (TP). The mean value of effluent CODcr, TN and TP removal rate was 90.63%, 63.05% and 60.51% respectively during 180 days of operation. In order to obtain stable membrane flux, the combined MBR packed with fibrous bio-film carrier and added diatomite. Furthermore, it could alleviate membrane fouling effectively. As a result, the combined MBR improved effluent water quality significantly and alleviated membrane fouling remarkably.

To improve treatment performance and alleviate membrane fouling, the physical and biological properties of sludge in combined MBR which divided into anoxic, anaerobic and aerobic zone were studied. During initial startup period, the sludge in A/A/O combined MBR was suspended growth, after textile carrier package, the sludge was suspended and fixed growth. The biomass analysis showed that with the increase of operation time, MLVSS/MLSS decreased from 0.93 to 0.72 which certified that high MLSS concentration caused biomass growth slow gradually, while packing textile carrier could supply attached biomass which maximum value was 0.18g/cm(3777.8mg/L). Meanwhile, high MLSS concentration also resluted in high sludge viscosity which could reach to 35.42mPa•s and decreased sludge activity. Particle size anaylisis showed that shear stress of aeration made the sludge flocs smaller than conventional activated sludge process. All the sludge properties which had been analysis in this study showed A/A/O combined MBR had great difference from conventional MBR process, and some parameters could be used for membrane fouling control in A/A/O combined MBR for wastewater treatment project.

To alleviate the membrane fouling in membrane bioreactor, a kind of modified diatomite was used as anti-fouling agent to examine the effect on sludge properties in submerged membrane bioreactor for synthetic domestic wastewater treatment. Three submerged membrane bioreactor setups were operated under fixed membrane flux 21.9m3/m2·h, meanwhile, modified diatomite was added into each membrane bioreactor with dosage of 0mg/L, 1000mg/L and 2000mg/L respectively. Sludge particle size, extracellular polymeric substances and molecular weight distribution were characterized as the activated sludge properties in this study. The experiment results showed that with the increase of modified diatomite dosage, the number of sludge particle size less than 10μm was declined, however, the number between 10–20μm was increased correspondingly. Total extracellular polymeric substances and big molecular weight substances were decreased remarkably with modified diatomite addition dosage of 1000mg/L. The results indicated that addition of modified diatomite could effect of sludge properties in submerged membrane bioreactor. Therefore, membrane filtration performance could be improved by modified diatomite adding which alleviate membrane fouling directly.

Membrane bio-reactor (MBR) is an innovative and effective wastewater treatment process, which has much more extra advantages than other processes. However, membrane fouling and high operational/maintenance costs are always two important factors that restrict the development of MBR. In order to alleviate membrane fouling, larger aeration rate is usually used, which increases the operational cost and decrease N and P removal efficiencies of MBR. This paper summarizes the pilot scale experimental study on the improvement of operational performance of MBR by its design modification from one cell into three cells with micro-aeration,normal aeration and enhanced aeration conditions respectively with the package of fibrous bio-film carrier and PAC. As the result, the effluent water quality was improved significantly and membrane fouling was alleviated remarkably.