Biofouling management in anaerobic membrane bioreactors

This chapter is aimed at providing an insight on the main issues around the membrane fouling in anaerobic membrane bioreactors (AnMBRs). The analysis presented here shows that membrane fouling in AnMBRs is attributed to three major factors: membrane features, operating conditions, and wastewater characteristics. Several ad-hoc strategies have been implemented in literature to mitigate membrane fouling in AnMBRs, such as gas sparging, media addition, chemical cleaning, and membrane rotation/vibration. Among them, gas sparging is considered the most expensive strategy due to the high power requirement of the gas blower (up to 1.345 kWh m-3). An accurate experimental and modeling analysis is suggested before deciding the strategy to adopt at full-scale. A summary on the energy requirement estimation methodologies for fouling mitigation also has been provided at the end of the chapter.