Engineering application of membrane bioreactor for wastewater treatment in China: Current state and future prospect

Abstract

China has been the forerunner of large-scale membrane bioreactor (MBR) application. Since the first large-scale MBR (≥10 000 m³·d⁻¹) was put into operation in 2006, the engineering implementation of MBR in China has attained tremendous development. This paper outlines the commercial application of MBR since 2006 and provides a variety of engineering statistical data, covering the fields of municipal wastewater, industrial wastewater, and polluted surface water treatment. The total treatment capacity of MBRs reached 1 × 10⁶ m³·d⁻¹ in 2010, and has currently exceeded 4.5 × 10⁶ m³·d⁻¹ with ~75% of which pertaining to municipal wastewater treatment. The anaerobic/anoxic/aerobic-MBR and its derivative processes have been the most popular in the large-scale municipal application, with the process features and typical ranges of parameters also presented in this paper. For the treatment of various types of industrial wastewater, the configurations of the MBR-based processes are delineated with representative engineering cases. In view of the significance of the cost issue, statistics of capital and operating costs are also provided, including cost structure and energy composition. With continuous stimulation from the environmental stress, political propulsion, and market demand in China, the total treatment capacity is expected to reach 7.5 × 10⁶ m³·d⁻¹ by 2015 and a further expansion of the market is foreseeable in the next five years. However, MBR application is facing several challenges, such as the relatively high energy consumption. Judging MBR features and seeking suitable application areas should be of importance for the long-term development of this technology.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

membrane bioreactor (MBR) / engineering application / wastewater treatment / review / China

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Acknowledgements

This work was partially supported by the Program for Outstanding Ph.D. Thesis of Beijing (No. 20131000305), the Major Science and Technology Program for Water Pollution Control and Treatment (No. 2011ZX07317-002), and Program for Changjiang Scholars and Innovative Research Team in University (No. IRT1152).

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2014 Higher Education Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg