Unravelling temperature-dependent fouling mechanism in a pilot-scale anaerobic membrane bioreactor via statistical modelling

Operational temperature is one of the most vital factors that profoundly affect membrane fouling during anaerobic membrane bioreactor operation. This study uncovered the temperature-dependent fouling mechanism in a pilot-scale anaerobic membrane bioreactor treating real municipal wastewater at ambient temperature seasonally fluctuating from 35 to 5 °C. It showed that compared to time accumulation effect of fouling layer, temperature played a more profound role on influencing membrane fouling. Low temperature caused severe membrane fouling by affecting the release of proteinous soluble microbial products (SMP) and extracellular polymeric substances (EPS) and the abundance of related microbial community structure, like Proteobacteria, Firmicutes, Bacteroidetes and Chloroflexi. The path analysis model established in this study, which was statistically significant at 5% level, revealed that temperature could substantially affect SMP and EPS, especially proteinous SMP (β = −0.94, p < 0.01), and thus indirectly influence total fouling rate, since SMP and EPS had significant influence on total fouling rate (p < 0.05). A temperature-based model (R2 > 0.95) was successfully developed in this study for predicting membrane fouling development over the seasons. The output of these two models varied with the type of membrane module. As calculated from the path coefficients, the influence of temperature on the total fouling rate of polymeric membrane (0.70) was greater than that on the total fouling rate of ceramic membrane (0.56). The regression coefficients of the formula obtained from the temperature-based model using the TMP results of polymeric membrane were around twice as large as those obtained from the model using the TMP results of ceramic membrane. These results suggested that ceramic membrane had better anti-fouling property, probably due to its chemical and thermal stability, hydrophilic surface, and well-organized pore structure, as confirmed by the resistance-in-series analysis and excitation-emission matrix (EEM) analysis of the foulant layer.