Pilot-scale plant application of membrane aerated biofilm reactor (MABR) technology in wastewater treatment

Abstract: This membrane aerated biofilm reactor (MABR) pilot project was performed at Ekeby wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) in Eskilstuna, Sweden. This plant is facing a future challenge of effluent TN < 10mg/L according to the new standard and the growing population, where higher treatment capacity is needed. The MABR as a newly invented technology, is chosen as a promising countermeasure towards the challenge, because of the simultaneous nitrification and denitrification of this technology. By the time of reporting, this project is still on-going, and more information will be reported later in separate report. The feed water comes from the secondary clarifier of full-scale plant. Dissolved oxygen (DO), processing air and flow rate was manually controlled to test different operational settings. However, there were a lot challenges during the testing period which makes it hard to evaluate the performance of this pilot. The ammonium removal efficiency is satisfying when the pilot was running smoothly. However, the TN removal efficiency did not comply with the expectation, achieved in average of 39,01%, due to the limitation of readily bio-degradable COD (rbCOD), which is a limitation of the biological process in general and is not specific to MABR. This technology is considered as promising by the end of the current testing period, since it can oxidize the ammonium effectively with smaller volume.