Textile wastewater treatment in a bench-scale anaerobic-biofilm anoxic-aerobic membrane bioreactor combined with nanofiltration

Abstract

This study evaluated the treatability of textile wastewaters in a bench-scale experimental system, comprising an anaerobic biofilter, an anoxic reactor and an aerobic membrane bioreactor (MBR). The MBR effluent was thereafter treated by a nanofiltration (NF) membrane. The proposed system was demonstrated to be effective in the treatment of the textile wastewater under the operating conditions applied in the study. The MBR system achieved a good COD (90–95%) removal; due to the presence of the anaerobic biofilter, also effective color removal was obtained (70%). The addition of the NF membrane allowed the further improvement in COD (50–80%), color (70–90%) and salt removal (60–70% as conductivity). In particular the NF treatment allowed the almost complete removal of the residual color and a reduction of the conductivity such as to achieve water quality suitable for reuse.

Keywords:

• Anaerobic biofilm
• membrane bioreactor
• nanofiltration
• textile wastewater
• water reuse

Acknowledgments

This study was partly supported by the European Union in the framework of the “AquaFit4use” project (ENV.2007.3.1.1.1-211534).