Bisphenol A removal from synthetic municipal wastewater by a bioreactor coupled with either a forward osmotic membrane or a microfiltration membrane unit

Abstract

Forward osmotic membrane bioreactor is an emerging technology that combines the advantages of forward osmosis and conventional membrane bioreactor. In this paper, bisphenol A removal by using a forward osmotic membrane bioreactor and a conventional membrane bioreactor that shared one biologic reactor was studied. The total removal rate of bisphenol A by the conventional membrane bioreactor and forward osmotic membrane bioreactor was as high as 93.9% and 98%, respectively. Biodegradation plays a dominant role in the total removal of bisphenol A in both processes. In comparison of membrane rejection, the forward osmosis membrane can remove approximately 70% bisphenol A from the feed, much higher than that of the microfiltration membrane (below 10%). Forward osmosis membrane bioreactor should be operated with its BPA loading rate under 0.08 mg·g^-1·d^-1 to guarantee the effluent bisphenol A concentration less than10 μg·L^-1.

Keywords

forward osmosis / membrane bioreactor / bisphenol A / microfiltration

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (No. YX2010-26) and Research Fund for the Doctoral Program of Higher Education of China (No. 20100014120003).

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

2014 Higher Education Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg