Search results for "reactors"
showing 10 items of 299 documents
Continuous 3-year outdoor operation of a flat-panel membrane photobioreactor to treat effluent from an anaerobic membrane bioreactor
2020
[EN] A membrane photobioreactor (MPBR) plant was operated continuously for 3 years to evaluate the separate effects of different factors, including: biomass and hydraulic retention times (BRT, HRT), light path (Lp), nitrification rate (NOxR), nutrient loading rates (NLR, PLR) and others. The overall effect of all these parameters which influence MPBR performance had not previously been assessed. The multivariate projection approach chosen for this study provided a good description of the collected data and facilitated their visualisation and interpretation. Forty variables used to control and assess MPBR performance were evaluated during three years of continuous outdoor operation by means …
Environmental impact of submerged anaerobic MBR (SAnMBR) technology used to treat urban wastewater at different temperatures
2013
[EN] The objective of this study was to assess the environmental impact of a submerged anaerobic MBR (SAnMBR) system in the treatment of urban wastewater at different temperatures: ambient temperature (20 and 33 degrees C), and a controlled temperature (33 degrees C). To this end, an overall energy balance (OEB) and life cycle assessment (LCA), both based on real process data, were carried out. Four factors were considered in this study; (1) energy consumption during wastewater treatment; (2) energy recovered from biogas capture; (3) potential recovery of nutrients from the final effluent; and (4) sludge disposal. The OEB and LCA showed SAnMBR to be a promising technology for treating urban…
Resource recovery from sulphate-rich sewage through an innovative anaerobic-based water resource recovery facility (WRRF)
2018
[EN] This research work proposes an innovative water resource recovery facility (WRRF) for the recovery of energy, nutrients and reclaimed water from sewage, which represents a promising approach towards enhanced circular economy scenarios. To this aim, anaerobic technology, microalgae cultivation, and membrane technology were combined in a dedicated platform. The proposed platform produces a high-quality solid- and coliform-free effluent that can be directly discharged to receiving water bodies identified as sensitive areas. Specifically, the content of organic matter, nitrogen and phosphorus in the effluent was 45 mg COD.L-1 , 14.9 mg N.L-1 and 0.5 mg P.L-1 , respectively. Harvested solar…
Outdoor flat-panel membrane photobioreactor to treat the effluent of an anaerobic membrane bioreactor. Influence of operating, design, and environmen…
2018
[EN] As microalgae have the ability to simultaneously remove nutrients from wastewater streams while producing valuable biomass, microalgae-based wastewater treatment is a win-win strategy. Although recent advances have been made in this field in lab conditions, the transition to outdoor conditions on an industrial scale must be further investigated. In this work an outdoor pilot-scale membrane photobioreactor plant was operated for tertiary sewage treatment. The effects of different parameters on microalgae performance were studied including: temperature, light irradiance (solar and artificial irradiance), hydraulic retention time (HRT), biomass retention time (BRT), air sparging system an…
Improving membrane photobioreactor performance by reducing light path: operating conditions and key performance indicators
2020
[EN] Microalgae cultivation has been receiving increasing interest in wastewater remediation due to their ability to assimilate nutrients present in wastewater streams. In this respect, cultivating microalgae in membrane photobioreactors (MPBRs) allows decoupling the solid retention time (SRT) from the hydraulic retention time (HRT), which enables to increase the nutrient load to the photobioreactors (PBRs) while avoiding the wash out of the microalgae biomass. The reduction of the PBR light path from 25 to 10 cm increased the nitrogen and phosphorus recovery rates, microalgae biomass productivity and photosynthetic efficiency by 150, 103, 194 and 67%, respectively.The areal biomass product…
Water resource recovery by means of microalgae cultivation in outdoor photobioreactors using the effluent from an anaerobic membrane bioreactor fed w…
2016
[EN] With the aim of assessing the potential of microalgae cultivation for water resource recovery (WRR), the performance of three 0.55 m3 flat-plate photobioreactors (PBRs) was evaluated in terms of nutrient removal rate (NRR) and biomass production. The PBRs were operated outdoor (at ambient temperature and light intensity) using as growth media the nutrient-rich effluent from an AnMBR fed with pre-treated sewage. Solar irradiance was the most determining factor affecting NRR. Biomass productivity was significantly affected by temperatures below 20 °C. The maximum biomass productivity (52.3 mg VSS·L−1·d−1) and NRR (5.84 mg NH4-N·L−1·d−1 and 0.85 mg PO4-P·L−1·…
Factors that affect the permeability of commercial hollow-fibre membranes in a submerged anaerobic MBR (HF-SAnMBR) system
2013
A demonstration plant with two commercial HF ultrafiltration membrane modules (PURON (R), Koch Membrane Systems, PUR-PSH31) was operated with urban wastewater. The effect of the main operating variables on membrane performance at sub-critical and supracritical filtration conditions was tested. The physical operating variables that affected membrane performance most were gas sparging intensity and back-flush (BF) frequency. Indeed, low gas sparging intensities (around 0.23 Nm(3) h(-1) m(-2)) and low BF frequencies (30s back-flush for every 10 basic filtration relaxation cycles) were enough to enable membranes to be operated sub-critically even when levels of mixed liquor total solids were hi…
Economic and environmental sustainability of an AnMBR treating urban wastewater and organic fraction of municipal solid waste
2016
[EN] The objective of this study was to evaluate the economic and environmental sustainability of a sub- merged anaerobic membrane bioreactor (AnMBR) treating urban wastewater (UWW) and organic fraction of municipal solid waste (OFMSW) at ambient temperature in mild/hot climates. To this aim, power requirements, energy recovery from methane (biogas methane and methane dissolved in the effluent), consumption of reagents for membrane cleaning, and sludge handling (polyelectrolyte and energy consumption) and disposal (farmland, landfilling and incineration) were evaluated within different operating scenarios. Results showed that, for the operating conditions considered in this study, AnMBR tec…
Nitrite inhibition of microalgae induced by the competition between microalgae and nitrifying bacteria
2020
[EN] Outdoor microalgae cultivation systems treating anaerobic membrane bioreactor (AnMBR) effluents usually present ammonium oxidising bacteria (AOB) competition with microalgae for ammonium uptake, which can cause nitrite accumulation. In literature, nitrite effects over microalgae have shown controversial results. The present study evaluates the nitrite inhibition role in a microalgae-nitrifying bacteria culture. For this purpose, pilot- and lab-scale assays were carried out. During the continuous outdoor operation of the membrane photobioreactor (MPBR) plant, biomass retention time (BRT) of 2 d favoured AOB activity, which caused nitrite accumulation. This nitrite was confirmed to inhib…
Kinetic modeling of autotrophic microalgae mainline processes for sewage treatment in phosphorus-replete and -deplete culture conditions
2021
[EN] A kinetic model of autotrophic microalgal growth in sewage was developed to determine the biokinetic processes involved, including carbon-, nitrogen- and phosphorus-limited microalgal growth, dependence on light intensity, temperature and pH, light attenuation and gas exchange to the atmosphere. A new feature was the differentiation between two metabolic pathways of phosphorus consumption according to the availability of extracellular phosphorus. Two scenarios were differentiated: phosphorus-replete and -deplete culture conditions. In the former, the microalgae absorbed phosphorus to grow and store polyphosphate. In the latter the microalgae used the stored polyphosphate as a phosphoru…