Survey of MBR market: Trends and perspectives in China

Membrane bioreactor (MBR) has gained considerable attention for wastewater treatment and reuse in China in the last two decades. Comparing with the global MBR market, which has an average annual growth rate of 10.9%, the average annual growth rate in China is nearly 100% in recent years. In the past 10 years, publications on MBR researches and applications for wastewater treatment have increased sharply. Over three hundred MBR plants have been successfully applied into practice for different wastewater treatments, such as municipal wastewater, bathing wastewater, restaurant wastewater, landfill leachate, hospital wastewater, petrochemical wastewater and high-concentration industrial wastewater. These plants have capacities ranging from 10 to 100,000 m³/d, among which over 12 MBR plants have capacities exceeding 10,000 m³/d. The largest MBR plant, i.e. Beijing Kunyu River WWPT, which has a capacity of 100,000 m³/d for municipal wastewater treatment and reuse, was constructed in Beijing by Origin Water Technology Co., Ltd. The largest MBR plant for industrial wastewater treatment was located in Tianjin and installed by Motimo Membrane Inc., which has a capacity of 30,000 m³/d. The largest MBR application for industrial sectors was petrochemical wastewater treatment, and over ten MBR plants each exceed a capacity of 5000 m³/d. In South-east China, the constructed MBRs are mostly involved in the high-strength industrial wastewater treatment while in North China MBRs mainly focused on municipal wastewater treatment and reuse.For an MBR commercial application in China, MBR plants were constructed by a lot of home-grown companies such as Tianjin Motimo Membrane Technology Co., Ltd., Beijing Origin Water Technology Co., Ltd. and Omexell Environmental Engineering Co., Ltd. and overseas-funded companies like Zenon-GE and CNC-Simens. Origin Water occupies the majority of the MBR market in China, whereas CNC-Simens and Zenon-GE have a larger number of installations in other parts of China. MBR unit key suppliers in China are Zenon (Canada), Mitsubishi-Rayon (Japan), Toray (Japan), Kubota (Japan), Norit (Netherlands), Motimo (China) etc.Due to more stringent regulations and wastewater reuse strategies, it is expected that a significant increase in MBR plant capacity and a widening of application areas will occur in the future.