Instrumentation, control, and automation for submerged anaerobic membrane bioreactors

Abstract

A submerged anaerobic membrane bioreactor (AnMBR) demonstration plant with two commercial hollow-fibre ultrafiltration systems (PURON ® , KochMembrane Systems, PUR-PSH31) was designed and operated for urban wastewater treatment. An instrumentation, control, and automation (ICA) system was designed and implemented for proper process performance. Several singleinput-single-output (SISO) feedback control loops based on conventional on-off and PID algorithms were implemented to control the following operating variables: flow-rates (influent, permeate, sludge recycling and wasting, and recycled biogas through both reactor and membrane tanks), sludge wasting volume, temperature, transmembrane pressure, and gas sparging. The proposed ICA for AnMBRs for urban wastewater treatment enables the optimisation of this new technology to be achieved with a high level of process robustness towards disturbances.

Economic and environmental sustainability of an AnMBR treating urban wastewater and organic fraction of municipal solid waste

“…A 0.2-m 3 tank for OFMSW equipped with a stirrer for homogenisation of the sample and membrane diffusers for aeration and removal of fats and oils was also included in the plant. Further details on this AnMBR can be found in Robles et al (2015) and Moñino et al (2016).…”

Wastewater nutrient removal in a mixed microalgae–bacteria culture: effect of light and temperature on the microalgae–bacteria competition

“…The effluent of an anaerobic membrane bioreactor pilot plant was used as microalgae PBR influent. Further details of the characteristics of the AnMBR may be found in [2,21].…”

A plant-wide energy model for wastewater treatment plants: application to anaerobic membrane bioreactor technology

“…In order to control the temperature when necessary, the anaerobic reactor is jacketed and connected to a water heating/cooling system. Further details on this AnMBR can be found in Giménez et al [19] and Robles et al [33].…”

“…Numerous on-line sensors and items of automatic equipment were installed in order to automate and control plant operations and provide on-line information about the state of the process [33]. The online sensors employed in this study consist of the following: two pH-temperature transmitters used to measure the temperature in both inflow and AnMBR; one flow indicator transmitter used for calculating the amount of mixed liquor to be heat; and one automatic valve that allows to pass water through the reactor jacket for controlling the temperature in the system.…”