Development of a Simple Ceramic Membrane Bio-reactor For Wastewater Treatment

Abstract

In this study a low cost and simple type ceramic membrane was innovated for concurrent wastewater treatment and reuse. As the MBR processes are still costly in terms of price of membrane, maintenance cost and energy consumption. Therefore, a low cost and simple MIBR will be ideal in the case of its application in developing countries. In this study, a simple Ceramic Membrane Bio-reactor was introduced to reduce the membrane cost, maintenance cost and operation costs for its application. This technology can be used in treatment of septic tank effluent as well as other purpose for recycling of wastewater. Especially in urban areas where the soak well effluent cannot infiltrate into the ground as the infiltration rate is limited for a particular soil at particular place. This technology can also be very effective for recycling of wastewater. As most of the septic tank effluent in residential area is directly disposed into the storm water drain, this technology can be used for reducing pollution of that effluents. Therefore, an attempt was taken to study the performance of CMBR for its potential application in recycling and treatment of wastewater. Because the general increase of the fresh water demand, water shortages and environment protection, this technology can be useful to treat and recycling of wastewater as a sustainable solution of these problems. It is now also established that wastewater recycling is feasible and can contribute to sustainable water management. Besides groundwater recharge by infiltration, other applications of non-potable purposes, for example irrigation of parks, schools yards, cemeteries and golf courses, vehicle washing, fire protection, boiler feed water, air conditioning and concrete production and preservation of wetlands, recycled water can be used. Locally available and cheap materials (clay soil and rice bran) were used as ingredients to decline the membrane cost in this study. The ceramic membrane was submerged inside reactor to formulate as ceramic membrane bioreactor

(CMBR). Gravitational-filtration system was induced for collecting the effluent to reduce the operational cost, and the applicability of this low cost CMBR technology was checked in laboratory scale. The average Turbidity Removal efficiency of all Reactors was 95.34%. The result shows that about 88.45% Color removal was achieved by the system. Turbidity and Color removal efficiency was excellent that's why the filtered water is more acceptable by the people as the aesthetic appearance of the water is good. The average SS removal efficiency was 95.25% by all Reactors which demonstrates that the removal of SS was very efficient by CMBR. About 81.55% COD removal was achieved by Ceramic Membrane Bio-reactor. From the results, it can be concluded that the CMBR has great potential in removing biodegrading organic pollutants from wastewater. The run time of CMBR was very good. The run time of CMBR was 242 days. The quality of effluent water was excellent as the effluent water was clear colored and odor- free. It was found that high removal efficiency of organic content was obtained that could be made it suitable for wastewater reuse. As the Ceramic Membrane was made by locally available materials the technology was inexpensive. Therefore, the technology is suitable and can be adapted in developing countries for wastewater treatment and reuse.