A review on the applications of ultrasonic technology in membrane bioreactors

Samira Arefi-Oskoui; Alireza Khataee; Mahdie Safarpour; Yasin Orooji; Vahid Vatanpour

doi:10.1016/j.ultsonch.2019.104633

A review on the applications of ultrasonic technology in membrane bioreactors

Ultrason Sonochem. 2019 Nov:58:104633. doi: 10.1016/j.ultsonch.2019.104633. Epub 2019 Jun 8.

Authors

Samira Arefi-Oskoui¹, Alireza Khataee², Mahdie Safarpour³, Yasin Orooji⁴, Vahid Vatanpour⁵

Affiliations

¹ College of Materials Science and Engineering, Nanjing Forestry University, Nanjing 210037, China; Research Laboratory of Advanced Water and Wastewater Treatment Processes, Department of Applied Chemistry, Faculty of Chemistry, University of Tabriz, 51666-16471 Tabriz, Iran.
² Research Laboratory of Advanced Water and Wastewater Treatment Processes, Department of Applied Chemistry, Faculty of Chemistry, University of Tabriz, 51666-16471 Tabriz, Iran; Department of Materials Science and Nanotechnology Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Near East University, 99138 Nicosia, Mersin 10, Turkey. Electronic address: a_khataee@tabrizu.ac.ir.
³ Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Basic Science, Azarbaijan Shahid Madani University, 83714-161 Tabriz, Iran.
⁴ College of Materials Science and Engineering, Nanjing Forestry University, Nanjing 210037, China. Electronic address: yasin@njfu.edu.cn.
⁵ Department of Applied Chemistry, Faculty of Chemistry, Kharazmi University, 15719-14911 Tehran, Iran.

PMID: 31450367
DOI: 10.1016/j.ultsonch.2019.104633

Abstract

Membrane bioreactors (MBRs) have received increasing attention in the field of wastewater treatment in recent years. However, membrane fouling is the main problem of MBRs, limiting their widespread and large applications. Membrane cleaning methods can be mainly classified into four types including chemical, physical, physico-chemical and biological clean the fouled membrane. In recent years, ultrasonication has been reported as a promising cleaning technique for the membranes fouled in MBRs. Ultrasonic irradiation can clean the fouled membrane by creating important physical phenomena including microjets, microstreams and shock waves. Moreover, the ultrasonic method can be combined with other cleaning methods e.g. chemical cleaning and backwashing in order to improve the cleaning efficiency. It should be noted that the application of ultrasonic in the MBR system is not limited to the cleaning of membrane. The pretreatment of the wastewater by ultrasonic irradiation or ultrasound coupled with other methods, e.g. ozonation, prior to MBR system, can decrease the organic loading of the wastewater and subsequently postpone the fouling of the membrane. This paper critically reviews the recent advances in the applications of ultrasound in MBR systems. Emerging issues associated with application of on-line ultrasound and also hybrid on-line ultrasound for controlling the membrane fouling in MBR systems are critically reviewed. Moreover, application of the ultrasound in ex-situ form for cleaning the fouled membranes and pretreatment of wastewater prior to the MBR system is discussed.

Keywords: Cleaning of membranes; Hybrid ultrasound; Membrane bioreactor; Membrane fouling; Ultrasonication.

Publication types

Review