Robust performance of a novel anaerobic biofilm membrane bioreactor with mesh filter and carbon fiber (ABMBR) for low to high strength wastewater treatment

•A novel anaerobic biofilm membrane bioreactor (ABMBR) was developed.•The carbon fiber based biofilm effectively mitigated membrane fouling in ABMBR.•Mesh filter was used as the support material instead of a membrane in ABMBR.•ABMBR was assessed under various OLR for low to high strength wastewater treatment.•This novel ABMBR is robust for wastewater treatment throughout the OLR shocks.

A novel anaerobic biofilm membrane bioreactor with mesh filter and carbon fiber (ABMBR) was developed to treat wastewater from low to high strength and evaluated throughout the shock changes of organic loading rate (OLR). Results indicated that this novel ABMBR achieved satisfactory and steady chemical oxygen demand (COD) removals with a mean value of 95% and a mean methane yield of 0.29 L CH4/g CODremoved. More importantly, no major volatile fatty acids were accumulated after each OLR shock. Employing carbon fiber significantly reduced the membrane fouling, and fouling rate (0.95 × 109-9.83 × 109 m−1  h−1) was much lower than that of conventional anaerobic membrane bioreactor reported in literatures. Methanosaeta was the dominant genus in the biofilm representing 46% of relative abundance, demonstrating that aceticlastic methanogens played an important role in ABMBR after the 186-d operation. These suggest that the new ABMBR system is robust for wastewater treatment throughout the OLR shocks, which has big potential in anaerobic wastewater treatment with the low membrane fouling rate.

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