Quorum Quenching for Biofouling Control in Membrane Bioreactors

Abstract

In today's World, the recovery, reuse, and recycling of water turn heads more with the continuing water scarcity, and this requires a development of conventional wastewater treatment technologies. Membrane bioreactors (MBRs) can provide many advantages over the conventional activated sludge systems. However, biofouling problem restricts the potential widespread application of MBRs. The main reason for this is the increase in the operating costs. Nowadays, there are much research to elucidate and control the membrane fouling in MBR. In fact, it is difficult to find an effective solution for biofouling problem without heading toward to biological concepts, because the biomass matrix is significantly complex and includes various living microorganisms. Quorum quenching (QQ) mechanism aims to prevent the signaling for communication and group behaviors. For the last five years, the development of antibiofouling strategies based on QQ in MBRs has been a relatively hot topic in biofouling research. QQ is a natural process which is not harmful to the environment. Therefore, unquestionably, studies on QQ in MBR represent a promising alternative for controlling biofouling for future applications. This article explains the quorum sensing (QS) and QQ concepts and presents various and highly successful examples for enzymatic, bacterial, and fungal QQ MBR operations.