Performance of reverse osmosis (RO) for water recovery from permeates of membrane bio-reactor (MBR)

Abstract

In this study, permeate from a hollow fiber polyethylene (PE) membrane bio-reactor (MBR) system treating synthetic agricultural wastewater was fed into a cellulose acetate brackish water reverse osmosis (BWRO30 2540) membrane system; three different trans-membranes pressures (TMPs) of 1000, 2500, and 4000 kPa were selected to evaluate the system performance in terms of general operating parameters as well as the removal of chosen important potential fouling water quality parameters. The results showed that highest corrected permeate flux rate was at a TMP of 2500 kPa, whereas lowest recorded at a TMP of 4000 kPa. Similar situation prevailed in water recovery rate. But temperature corrected specific fluxes decreased as the applied TMPs increased. In all selected TMPs, more than 96% of salinity was removed. Permeate from MBR as feed to reverse osmosis required frequent chemical cleaning than the microfiltration/ultrafiltration (MF/UF) permeates and granular media filter (GMF) filtered in order to maintain the required rate of product water. One of the reasons for this frequent chemical cleaning is due to higher total organic carbon as well as total nitrogen (TN) in the MBR permeate. This result needs to be further evaluated through field trials.

Design, economic evaluation and optimization of enzymatic membrane reactors for antibiotics degradation in wastewaters

“…To achieve this objective, specific advanced treatments for the elimination of antibiotics must be incorporated into existing installations. Membrane technologies such as reverse osmosis and nanofiltration have shown promising results for the removal of micropollutants, including pharmaceuticals, from wastewaters when incorporated to traditional WWTPs [10][11][12]. Adsorption on activated carbon is also an alternative complementary process which has been taken into consideration to complement traditional WWTPs in order to improve the removal of micropollutants [13][14][15].…”