Modeling the performance of a membrane bioreactor controlled by air sparging.

A membrane bioreactor (MBR) combines biological treatment with the membrane separation technology. To improve the understanding of the MBR processes and know how, many researches were carried out suing the trial and error method and build the knowledge based on experiments. The problem with such an empirical research is that the results are difficult to generalize due to the complexity of the system. In the past, mechanistic mathematical models have proven their usefulness to understand processes of complex systems. A crucial step in calibrating these models is the collection of experimental data.