Construction of transmembrane pressure estimation model for membrane bioreactor

Abstract

A membrane bioreactor (MBR) is the equipment to filtrate sewage or factory disposal water by MF/UF membrane. Activated sludge is used to remove organic substances metabolically and filtrated to membrane by transmembrane pressure (TMP). Though MBR is able to remove activated sludge, other particles of raw water, or both of them effectively, increase of TMP as a result of fouling growth brought by deposition of particles is one of the biggest problems for improving its performance. Membrane needs to be washed when TMP reaches about 25-30 kPa. The focus of this study is to estimate TMP with statistical prediction models and also know when the membrane wash-up will become necessary for the realization of distributed MBR and its unattended operation. In this study, two statistical models were constructed between explanatory variables related to fouling and an objective variable, i.e., membrane resistance (R) or deposition rate of foulant (DR). It is able to predict TMP because R or DR could be converted into TMP. As results of TMP prediction with real industrial data, usage of DR as an objective variable improved the accuracy of TMP prediction.