Biological Nutrient Removal by Modified MBR System

Organization Name	WORLDiscoveries - University of Western Ontario
Institutional ID Number	3941
Technology Tags or Keywords	chemical engineering cleantech dentrification environmental engineering environmental technologies membrane bioreactor municipal wastewater phosphate phosphate removal science and technology wastewater wastewater treatment
Summary	A new, compact, highly efficient wastewater treatment process employing an MBR unit.
Technology Benefit	Excellent effluent quality Reduced energy requirements relative to conventional activated sludge plants Significant reduction in sludge volume and therefore reduced disposal costs Shorter hydraulic retention times compared to conventional BNR processes
Technology Applications	This technology will be of interest to those in the fields of water and wastewater treatment, biological nutrient removal from wastewater, water reuse and membrane bioreactor technology. Potential applications include: municipal wastewater dentrification phosphate removal
Technology page URL	--
Detailed Technology Description	Our inventors have designed, tested, modeled and optimized a new, compact, highly efficient wastewater treatment process employing an MBR unit. This new process maximizes the available activated sludge for nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) removal. The unique configuration and employment of the MBR achieves excellent tertiary effluent quality with BOD, COD, TKN, NH4-N, NO3-N and TP of 1, 14, 0.25, < 0.2, 5 and 0.1 mg/L respectively.
TTO homepage URL	--
URL to link to documents, images, videos, etc.	--
Additional Information	Track Code AF-005 Background Biological nutrient removal (BNR) waste treatment processes have become increasingly popular in response to ever more stringent effluent nutrient criteria, put in place as a result of deteriorating surface water quality. Nitrogen and phosphorus can be removed simultaneously in BNR processes, which employ a combination of anaerobic, anoxic, and aerobic suspended-growth biological reactors (called A2O processing). The efficiency of the process depends to a large extent on the amount of active biomass that can be retained for bioconversion of nutrients. More recently, membrane bioreactors (MBRs) have been introduced to help maximize and provide control of biomass retention, while decreasing the amount of turbidity released in the effluent. MBR technology is slowly gaining interest in the municipal and industrial wastewater treatment market as it is now recognized for its ability to meet stringent effluent criteria, ease of retrofitting into existing systems, and lower space requirement than traditional systems. The size of the membrane bioreactor market was estimated at around US $2.0 billion in 2002 with rapid growth expected. The World Bank estimates that US $600-800 billion will have to be spent in water and wastewater treatment in the next ten years. As wastewater treatment is a cost to municipal governments and companies, there is a strong incentive to make it as economical as possible.

Information