Brewery wastewater treatment using an anaerobic membrane bioreactor

Abstract Anaerobic digestion technology plays an important role in the treatment of high strength wastewater. This study investigated the treatment of brewery wastewater using an advanced anaerobic membrane reactor (AnMBR). The results suggest that the AnMBR can achieve a COD removal higher than 98% when treating brewery wastewater, with a biogas yield of 0.53 ± 0.015 m 3 biogas/kgCOD at 35 °C. It was found that the 0.04-μm UF membrane played an important role in reducing COD concentrations in the AnMBR effluent. The observed specific MLVSS growth rate and yield for the AnMBR system tested were determined as 0.022 ± 0.001 gVSS/gVSS/d and 0.029 ± 0.001 gVSS/gCOD, respectively. The critical flux for the membrane filtration with the AnMBR system tested was in the range of 8.64 ± 0.69 L/m 2 /h, and the results showed that chemical recovery cleaning is necessary to maintain a stable, long-termoperation at a filtration flux of 8 L/m 2 /h when treating brewery wastewater. The size fraction analysis of the EPS showed that particulate proteins and polysaccharides were the dominant forms of EPS in the AnMBR, which could exert a critical influence on the filtration behavior of the membrane process under the sub-critical flux condition in AnMBRs.