Autotrophic nitrogen‐removing biofilms on porous and non‐porous membranes

Abstract

The effective removal of nitrogen compounds from wastewater has become a critical issue for treatment plants as the awareness of their negative impact on the environment increased. Autotrophic nitrogen removal has become an interesting alternative to the more conventional heterotrophic processes, as it eliminates the need for an organic carbon addition to the source water and reduces biomass yields. Gas transfer membrane biofilm reactors (MBfR) for nitrification and hydrogen driven denitrification are of special interest as they combine membrane diffusers and biofilms, provide an efficient supply of necessary electron donor for autotrophic removal of ammonia and nitrate, extend solids retention times and retain biomass within the reactor. Subsequently, a wide range of MBfR, which vary based on the type of membrane material and membrane module configuration, are being tested for this purpose. This paper reviews the research to date and also discusses the challenges that still lay ahead before MBfR can be used at treatment plants.

Performance of innovative textile biofilters for domestic wastewater treatment

“…This phenomenon can be more difficult to explain, as no difference between dissolved oxygen concentration in the outflows from both types of textile (6.1 ± 0.8 g/m 3 for TS 50 and 6.3 ± 0.6 g/m 3 ) was observed. The ammonium nitrogen removal could be related to the autotrophic nitrogen removal, which was reported in the literature for other (partially similar) conditions and systems [18,19].…”

Assessing microbial competition in a hydrogen‐based membrane biofilm reactor (MBfR) using multidimensional modeling

“…The hydrogen-based MBfR has been studied extensively for treating nitrate (Celmer-Repin et al, 2010), and other oxidized contaminants, including perchlorate, bromate, chromate, selenite, and arsenate (Chung et al, 2007;Martin and Nerenberg, 2012;Nerenberg and Rittmann, 2004). Hydrogenbased MBfRs for the treatment of nitrate from drinking water have been tested at the pilot scale (Tang et al, 2010;Zhao et al, 2014), and a commercial system was operated in Rancho Cucamonga, California, USA (Martin and Nerenberg, 2012).…”

Biocatalytic membrane reactors for the removal of recalcitrant and emerging pollutants from wastewater

“…© Woodhead Publishing Limited, 2013 Several researchers have studied organics and nitrogen removal by oxygen-based MBfRs by developing or using variations of the concept proposed by Timberlake et al . ( 1988 ), and research in this area has been reviewed in several papers (Brindle and Stephenson, 1996 ;Casey et al ., 1999b ;Celmer-Repin et al ., 2010 ;Hwang et al ., 2009b ;Sun et al ., 2010 ;Syron and Casey, 2008a ;Wilderer, 1995 ). One example of innovative variation of the oxygen-based MBfRs is the sequencing batch MBfR developed by Terada et al .…”

“…It has also been combined with oxygen-based MBfRs for nitrifi cation followed by hydrogenotrophic denitrifi cation (Cowman et al ., 2005 ;Hwang et al ., 2009aHwang et al ., , 2010Shin et al ., 2005Shin et al ., , 2008Smith et al ., 2008 ). The development of hydrogenbased MBfRs is reviewed in three papers (Celmer-Repin et al ., 2010 ;Chung et al ., 2006a ;Rittmann et al ., 2004 ).…”