Potential for reuse of high cellulose containing wastewater after membrane bioreactor treatment

It is difficult to adequately treat wastewater with a high cellulose content with the traditional anaerobic and aerobic activated sludge processes. In this study we used microfiltration (MF) and reverse osmosis (RO) membranes combined with an anaerobic or aerobic activated sludge process to treat high cellulose containing wastewater for different hydraulic retention times (HRTs). The potential target applications for reuse of the treated wastewater are also compared. Six bioreactors, which were configured as anaerobic sequencing batch reactor (ANSBR), aerobic sequencing batch reactor (ASBR), aerobic membrane bioreactor (AMBR), AMBR plus RO (AMBR/RO), anaerobic activated sludge plus aerobic MBR (AOMBR), and AOMBR plus RO (AOMBR/RO), was operated in this study. The experiment results showed that, as expected, no effluents from the ASBR or the ANSBR could meet the Taiwan EPA criteria for effluent and wastewater reuse, no matter what the HRT was. However when the HRT was 12 h or more, the effluent from the AMBR and AOMBR processes did meet the criteria for effluent, but still did not meet the treated wastewater reuse criteria , primarily due to the color, total alkalinity, and total dissolved solid parameters. Finally, the effluents from the AMBR/RO and AOMBR/RO processes did meet the Taiwan criteria for both effluent and treated wastewater reuse when the HRT for the AOMBR/RO and AMBR/RO processes was equal to or longer than 12 h and 8 h, respectively. For the HRT of 4 h for both the AOMBR/RO and AMBR/RO process, and an HRT of 8 h for the AOMBR/RO process, neither the effluent criteria nor the treated wastewater reuse criteria were met.