Salt stress in a membrane bioreactor: Dynamics of sludge properties, membrane fouling and remediation through powdered activated carbon dosing

摘要: Membrane bioreactors are a well-established technology for wastewater treatment. However, their efficiency is adversely impacted by membrane fouling, primarily inciting very conservative operations of installations that makes them less appealing from an economic perspective. This fouling propensity the activated sludge closely related to system disturbances. Therefore, improved insight into impact crucial towards increased performance. In this work, disturbance salt shock was investigated with respect composition and filterability in two parallel lab-scale bioreactors. Several key parameters (soluble microbial products, sludge-bound extracellular polymeric substances, supramicron particle size distributions (PSD), submicron concentrations) were intensively monitored prior to, during, after investigate its as well potential governing mechanism. Upon addition, PSD immediately shifted smaller floc sizes, total rate increased. Following certain delay, increase particles, supernatant proteins, polysaccharides observed irreversible rate. Recovery evidenced simultaneous decrease above mentioned quantities. A similar experiment introducing powdered carbon (PAC) addition used remediation resulted either no or significant changes quantities, signifying mitigation strategy.