A novel aerobic electrochemical membrane bioreactor with CNTs hollow fiber membrane by electrochemical oxidation to improve water quality and mitigate membrane fouling

A novel electro-assisted membrane bioreactor (EMBR) was constructed by integrating conductive carbon nanotubes hollow fiber membranes (CNTs-HFMs) into an aerobic activated sludge system. Herein, the CNTs-HFMs served as anode and filtration core simultaneously. Contrasted with the other two MBRs (PVDF-HFMs and CNTs-HFMs without electro-assistance), the effluent COD and NH4+N were lower than 40 mg/L and 3 mg/L at +1.0 V even HRT as short as 4 h. However, they were mostly over 50 mg/L (COD) and 5 mg/L (NH4+N) under the same conditions in the other two MBRs. The hydraulic cleaning for electro-assisted CNTs-HFMs was carried out only once during 60-day operation, and the permeate flux recovered to 100% of the original status. While four and five times hydraulic cleaning were executed for other two MBRs (PVDF-HFMs and CNTs-HFMs), respectively. Furthermore, merely 50 min continuous electrochemical oxidation was enough to resume flux of the heavily fouled CNTs-HFMs, i.e. flux recovered to 2020.87 L/(bar•m2•h) from 394.68 L/(bar•m2•h) (pure water flux, ∼2200 L/(bar·m2·h)). Simpson and Shannon indexes indicated enhanced microbial community stability in EMBR. Thus, electro-assisted CNTs-HFMs endow EMBR excellent anti-fouling ability and good effluent quality.