MEMTHANE®: An Innovative Anaerobic Membrane Bioreactor
| Date/Time: | 24 May 2012
12:15-12:30 |
| Jon McAteer, Technical Manager, Veolia Water Solutions & Technologies |
Seminar Details
Anaerobic systems, such as UASB and EGSB, using granular sludge technology have been very successful in treating industrial wastewaters with COD loads in the range 1.2 - 15g/l, suspended solids less than 500mg/l and with low concentrations (<50 mg/l) of fats, oils and grease (FOG). That is wastewaters with predominantly soluble COD. However, many industries produce wastewaters which have COD concentrations > 20 g/l and high concentrations of suspended matter and fats. Until recently the only technologies available for these applications were Continuous Stirred Tank Reactors (CSTR) using flocculated solids technology or very highly loaded granular sludge reactors.
This paper describes the development by Veolia Water Solutions & Technologies of an innovative anaerobic membrane bioreactor to treat high strength wastewaters. MEMTHANE® is a compact system that combines biological bioreactor with a membrane separation process. It's ability to degrade FOG means that biogas production is higher than with conventional processes, which require pre-treatment to remove suspended matter and FOG before fermentation, which means that the associated COD cannot be converted to methane.
A case study will be presented in which a MEMTHANE® plant has been operating successfully to treat 200m3/day of high FOG dairy wastewater with a COD of 62g/l. With a COD removal efficiency of 99.5%, the process has demonstrated significantly improved discharge quality in respect of suspended solids, colloids and related COD and BOD, and a higher concentration of active biomass in the reactor, which means increased efficiency and higher loading rates.
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