Comparison of the Purifying Performances of Membrane Bioreactor Lab Scale with Activated Sludge Treatment

Abstract

As the principal objective, this present study compares the purifying performances of the membrane bioreactor (MBR) with the conventional activated sludge used from the wastewater treatment plant of Beni Messous (Algiers) with the average characteristics in the chemical oxygen demand being 586 mg/L and 188 mg/L in the biochemical oxygen de- mand and 14 NTU of turbidity. The membrane bioreactor received the domestic wastewater in side stream with an ul- trafiltration membrane under the following conditions: mixed liquor suspended solids concentration 4g/L; cross flow ve- locity U= 4m/s at constant transmembrane pressure 0.8 bar. The results obtained show a better elimination of carbona- ceous pollution and suspended solids (SS) for the MBR with COD final value equal to 10 mg/L and 2 mg/L in BOD5 and 0,3 mg/ L for SS. For the conventional activated sludge, we obtained a final value equal to 77 mg/L for the COD and 18 mg/L for BOD5 and 25 mg/L for SS.