Recent Developments in Municipal Wastewater Treatment Using Anaerobic Membrane Bioreactor: A Review

This review summarizes progresses in research on municipal wastewater treatment using anaerobic membrane bioreactors (AnMBR). At first, the AnMBR process options including membrane configuration and mean pore size or type are introduced. Next, many factors affect AnMBR performance in treating municipal wastewater, so this paper mainly focuses on the membrane characteristics, temperature, hydraulic retention time and solids retention time. The application of anaerobic membrane bioreactor relative to conventional anaerobic treatment processes is also evaluated. In recent years, pilot-scale research on AnMBR has been reported. However, there are still some problems which need to be overcome for future development. Finally, this paper summarizes the challenges to improve the AnMBR process, including the control of membrane fouling, the recovery of dissolved methane from the AnMBR system.