Cake layer morphology in microfiltration of activated sludge wastewater based on fractal analysis

Membrane bioreactor (MBR) is an important solid-liquid separation technology employed widely in the wastewater treatment. However, membrane permeability decline rapidly due to membrane fouling, which limited the application of MBR. In order to obtain understanding of the complex membrane fouling mechanisms, analysis of the effect of the microstructure on the cake permeability is necessary. In this regard, study of the distribution and porosity of the cake is very necessary. The pore distribution is strongly influenced by cake compressibility but information on how to describe this effect is very limited. In this paper, fractal theory was used to gain knowledge of cake microstructure and its correlation to macroscopic cake properties. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and image analysis were utilized to estimate pore size and pore size distributions. The two-dimensional fractal dimension was determined. The results show that the cake layer had a good fractal characteristic, and the fractal dimension (Ds) was linearly correlated with porosity (R2 = 0.929). The fractal dimension had some relation with cake resistance and cake specific resistance. It indicates that fractal dimension provides an approach for quantification of cake structure and cake permeability.