Membrane-Based Technologies for the Up-Concentration of Municipal Wastewater: A Review of Pretreatment Intensification

Abstract

Municipal wastewater has a high content of recoverable energy, distributed within particulate and soluble organic matters. It is estimated that the anaerobic treatment of that content and the recovery of biogas energy could supply at least enough power to render a wastewater treatment plant electrically self-sufficient. Therefore, an intensification of wastewater pretreatment could separate and concentrate the organic matter in order to improve the anaerobic stabilization of both the solids and the water streams. In light of this, membrane-based processes have been considered as novel technologies in order to recover carbon from municipal wastewater. In this work, direct membrane filtration, forward osmosis and dynamic membrane have been reviewed as possible membrane-based technologies for the up-concentration of wastewater. A literature overview has been performed in order to elucidate the main operational parameters and to compare the advantages and downsides of every pretreatment reported up until now.

Keywords:

• Wastewater up-concentration
• carbon recovery
• direct membrane filtration
• psychrophilic anaerobic treatment
• wastewater intensive pretreatment

Acknowledgments

The authors gratefully acknowledge the support provided by the Environmental Technology group (UIC – 071) of the Universidad de Valladolid. Thiago Antonio would like to thank the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq, National Council for the Scientific and Technological Development – Brazil) for his PhD scholarship.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico [234006/2014-5].