Evaluation of membrane bioreactor technology (MBR) for wastewater treatment: Biofouling control by bacterial quorum quenching (BQQ)

The membrane bioreactor (MBR) has some advantages compared to another modern wastewater treatment processes, by the combined operation of solid removal and organics reduction process only in single reactor for wastewater treatment. The fouling of membrane especially by biological materials is still the main problem to be concerned for MBR. Biofouling has negative effect on the reactor performance and required to solve the problem. Main causes of biofouling phenomena are: extracellular polymeric substance (EPS) and soluble microbial products (SMP). In view of this problem, many researches were done to control biofouling of MBR. Bacterial quorum quenching (QQ) is a very good method to control membrane biofouling in MBRs. In this presentation, the simple simulation of biofouling in MBR and its effect on reactor performance in domestic wastewater treatment was simulated with COMSOL MULTIPHYSICS software. The nature of bacterial quorum sensing (QS) and bacterial quorum quenching (QQ) have been investigated. As the result of simulation, the effect of EPS on MBR biofouling is more than SMP. Because in EPS contours high concentration is observed compared to SMP contours, which shows the probability of biofouling in membrane. Finally, MBR biofouling control through quorum quenching (QQ) was evaluated to solve the MBR fouling issue through the biological aspect.

Evaluation of membrane bioreactor technology (MBR) for wastewater treatment: Biofouling control by bacterial quorum quenching (BQQ) Keywords:

Bacterial quorum quenching (QQ) , Biofouling , Extracellular polymeric substance (EPS) , Membrane bioreactor (MBR) , Soluble microbial products (SMP)