The study was based on an external pilot-scale membrane bioreactor (MBR) with a ceramic membrane compared to a conventional activated sludge process (ASP) plant. Both systems received their influent from domestic wastewater. The MBR produced an effluent of much better quality than the ASP in terms of total suspended solids (TSS), 5-day biological oxygen demand (BOD₅) and chemical oxygen demand (COD), total phosphorus (TP) and total nitrogen (TN). Other effluent quality parameters also indicated substantial differences between the ASP and the MBR. This study leads to the conclusion that in the case of domestic wastewater, MBR treatment leads to excellent effluent quality. Hence, the replacement of ASP by MBR may be justified on the basis of the improved removal of solids, nutrients, and micropollutants. Furthermore, in terms of reuse the high quality of the treated water allows it to be reused for irrigation.

In this study, the performance of the membrane bioreactor (MBR) and anoxic–aerobic sequencing batch reactor (SBR) are compared in treating municipal wastewater. The aim of the work was to determine the feasibility of these systems for the removal of organics matter and nutriments from the municipal wastewater. The MBR displayed a superior performance with removal efficiencies exceeding 99% for TSS, 94% for chemical oxygen demand (COD) and an improvement on SBR efficiencies was found. In the same way, the MBR produced an effluent with much better quality than SBR in terms of total nitrogen (TN) and total phosphorus (TP) removal efficiencies. Combining membrane separation and biodegradation processes or the membrane bioreactor (MBR) technology improved pollution removal efficiencies significantly.

The fish canning industries produce a large amount of wastewater. The high-strength wastewater from fish processing industry is of great concern worldwide. This type of wastewater is rich in organic matter and has high total dissolved solids (TDS). The elimination of salts is usually expensive and, on the other hand, the high salinity and the seasonal variation of the effluent characteristics make the removal of organic matter difficult using only a biological process. For this purpose, the use of a membrane bioreactor (MBR) process combining both a biological treatment and ultrafiltration membrane separation could be a perfect option for fish canning wastewater treatment. In this work, the performance of a MBR process is investigated to treat the fish canning industry wastewater. The removal efficiency of important parameters such as chemical oxygen demand (COD), five day-biological oxygen demand in (BOD5), total suspended solids (TSS), nitrate (NO3−), total Kjeldahl nitrogen (TKN), orthophosphate (PO43−) and TDS are followed. Experimental results show that the overall removal efficiencies obtained are: 96.6% for COD, 98% for BOD, 99.5% for TSS, 90% for nitrate, 96% for TDS and greater than 97% for TKN and PO43−. These results confirm that combination of both biological treatment and membrane process is regarded as an effective approach to reduce the contaminants in fish canning wastewater. Membrane bioreactor presents several advantages in terms of water resource protection because of the great quality of the treated water that can be reused.