Study on Membrane Fouling Behavior During Synthetic Refractory Wastewater Treatment Using SMBR with Hollow Fiber Module

Abstract

Membrane fouling behavior during synthetic refractory wastewater treatment was investigated using SMBR under well-acclimated biological conditions. A self-fabricated hollow fiber membrane module was employed in SMBR. Membrane fouling behavior was studied under the constant flux mode under the subcritical flux and supercritical flux conditions, and the partial blocking model and cake formation models were adopted to explore the membrane fouling mechanism. Experimental results have shown that the cm blocking models may be the dominating mechanism during the initial fouling process, which is found to coincide better with the experiment data compared to the classic blocking model, and then the membrane fouling occurs with the gradual process of the cake formation at characteristic fouling transition time (CFT). CFT was put forwarded as an evaluation parameter for predicting the backflushing intervals to prevent cake layer formation, which is responsible for significant increment in TMP or decrease in flux.