This study was carried out to investigate performance of a Vacuum Rotating Membrane (VRM) type membrane bioreactor (MBR). During the study, the VRM plant was erected from scratch and operated in METU campus. The plant was composed of two tanks. First one was about 100 m3 and it was used for biological treatment / the second tank, about 30 m3, was used as filter chamber. The permeate flow rate was adjusted between 6 and 8.5 m3/h giving a hydraulic retention time (HRT) of 18 hours during the study. In the aeration tank, dissolved oxygen (DO) was adjusted to between 4 and 0.1 mg/L to see the effect of the dissolved oxygen concentration on the process. In the filter chamber, total of 540 m2 flat sheet membrane surface were used for the separation of the treated wastewater from the activated sludge. During the 140 days of operation, MLSS concentration increased from 2.5 g/L to 20 g/L. A 99.99% BOD removal and above 95% COD removal were achieved most of the time during the study. At the time when organic loading rate was between 0.35 and 0.1 kg COD/ kgVSS-day, sludge production was very low. Therefore, sludge retention time (SRT) was taken as infinite. The turbidity in the effluent was less than 1 NTU at all the time, and was below that of the tap water. In the aeration tank, 100% Total-N removal was observed when DO was 2 mg/L and MLSS was 8.36 mg/L on 80th day of operation. This indicates that simultaneous nitrification and denitrification was taking place at these conditions. Later, N-removal decreased when DO was deliberately decreased to 0.1 mg/L in the aeration tank to prevent nitrification / for treated wastewaters were intended to be used for irrigation. Since the pores of the membrane were 0.038 & / #956 / m, treated wastewaters were sterile with respect to bacteria
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:METU/oai:etd.lib.metu.edu.tr:http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/2/12607028/index.pdf |
| Date | 01 January 2006 |
| Creators | Komesli, Okan Tarik |
| Contributors | Gokcay, Celal Ferdi |
| Publisher | METU |
| Source Sets | Middle East Technical Univ. |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | M.S. Thesis |
| Format | text/pdf |
| Rights | To liberate the content for METU campus |
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