0000000000553456

AUTHOR

A Cosenza

Interlinkages between operational conditions and direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions in a moving bed membrane biofilm reactor

Nitrous oxide (N2O) can be emitted during wastewater treatment contributing to the global warming due to its high global warming potential,. During the last ten years, several efforts have been provided to improve knowledge on: key mechanisms, operating factors and influent features affecting the N2O production/emission. However, the knowledge on the investigated issues is not completely mature. Indeed, in terms of mathematical modelling, literature shows that a reliable model has not yet been established due to the huge data set required and the complexity of the mechanistic models indicated as the most accurate. In this work, the first attempt to perform a multiregression analysis is pres…

research product

Sequential Batch Membrane BioReactor treating saline wastewater

A sequential batch membrane bioreactor treating high strength salinity wastewater has been investigated. The salt effects on carbon and nutrient removal, fouling behaviour as well as biomass kinetics have been analysed. Salinity was increased at step of 2 g NaCl L-1 per week. The total COD removal efficiency was high (93%) along the entire experimental campaign. However, the biological contribution on the COD removal efficiency was reduced with the increase of salinity. The lowest nitrification removal efficiency (63%) was obtained at 10 g NaCl L-1 salinity due to the lower nitrifier activity. Regarding membrane fouling, the irreversible cake deposition was the predominant fouling mechanism…

research product

Removal of carbon and nutrients from wastewater in a moving bed membrane biofilm reactor: the influence of the sludge retention time

A University of Cape Town (UCT) pilot plant combining both membrane bioreactor (MBR) and moving bed biofilm reactor (MBBR) technology was monitored. Three experimental Phases were carried out by varying the mixed liquor sludge retention time (SRT) (indefinite, 30 and 15 days, respectively). The system performance has been investigated during experiments in terms of: organic carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus removal, biokinetic/stoichiometric constants, membrane fouling tendency and sludge dewaterability. The observed results showed that by decreasing the SRT the UCT pilot plant was able to maintain very high total COD removal efficiencies, whilst the biological COD removal efficiency showed a…

research product