Regular articleThe brewery wastewater treatment and membrane fouling mitigation strategies in anaerobic baffled anaerobic/aerobic membrane bioreactor

•Regular back flush combined with aeration inhibited fouling effectively.•Carbon felt worked as anode of MFC and filler in anaerobic system.•Anaerobic baffled AnMBR/MBR could meet the different discharge standards.•Only 0.52%-0.99% of energy was consumed for fouling mitigation in this AnMBR.

In this study, the anaerobic baffled reactor contained sediment microbial fuel cell (MFC) was combined with anaerobic/aerobic membrane bioreactor (AnMBR/MBR). The brewery wastewater treatment and membrane fouling mitigation strategies were studied comprehensively. During anaerobic treatment process in this study, the chemical oxygen demand (COD) removal ratio of brewery wastewater could be maintained at 73.87% when the hydraulic retention time (HRT) was reduced from 42.44 h to 22.60 h. For membrane fouling mitigation in AnMBR, regular aeration was more effective than back flush, and the fouling could be inhibited further when both controlling ways were adopted at the same time. For membrane fouling mitigation in AnMBR of this study, only 0.52%-0.99% of electric energy was required for fouling mitigation, but 31.80% of energy was needed in MBR.

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