T ECH NOL OGY

Study Will Evaluate Anaerobic MBRs Potential

For Treating Wastewater

n recent years, membrane bioreactor

(mbr) technology has gained in popularity as a means of treating domestic
wastewater, in part because of increasingly stringent discharge requirements.
Capable of producing high-quality effluent, the membrane units in these systems are almost always coupled aerobic
reactors. However, significant amounts
of energy are required to inject oxygen
into the reactors to support the microorganisms that help cleanse the wastewater, and air must be blown into the
mbrs to keep the membranes free of
solids. Amid mounting concerns about
future water scarcity and rising energy
costs, researchers in the United Kingdom
are preparing to pilot test a 52,800 gpd
(200 m/d) anaerobic mbr. Because they
require less energy to operate and generate less sludge than their aerobic counterparts, anaerobic mbrs could reduce energy
demands related to wastewater treatment
and decrease the costs associated with
sludge disposal.
On February 28 the Royal Society, the United Kingdoms national
academy of science, awarded the
Brian Mercer Award for Innovation
to David Stuckey, Ph.D., a professor
of biochemical engineering in Imperial College Londons chemical engineering department. Stuckey and Alan
Hu, a graduate student in the same
department, have developed what they
call a submerged anaerobic membrane
bioreactor (sambr) for treating dilute
wastewater. As part of his award from
the Royal Society, Stuckey received a
grant of 250,000 (U.S.$494,000) to
fund a yearlong test of a sambr pilot
plant using actual screened sewage. To
be hosted by Anglian Water at its Cambridge treatment facilitythe Water
Innovation Centerthe field-scale test
will be designed by the consulting
engineering firm Black and Veatch,
which has its headquarters in Kansas
City, Missouri.

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Thus far Stuckey and Hu have tested

the sambr process only under laboratory conditions using three 0.8 gal
(3 L) reactors outfitted with two different types of submerged membranes, each having a pore size of
0.4 m. Seeded with sludge from a
conventional sewage sludge digester,
the reactors received a synthetic wastewater stream having a chemical oxygen demand (cod) concentration of
approximately 460 mg/L. Biogas generated during the treatment process was
collected and returned to the reactors at
a point beneath the membrane units. In
this way, the resulting bubbles helped
to clean the membranes. The studys
findings indicated that, on average, the
sambrs removed 93 percent of the cod
when operating at a hydraulic retention time of three hours, according to
an article by Stuckey and Hu in the
February 2006 issue of asces Journal of
Environmental Engineering.
As concerns about supplies of both
energy and water mount, a critical
nexus is emerging that will force wastewater treatment facilities to seek ways
to use less energy while simultaneously
producing more high-quality water for
reuse, Stuckey says. Energy is becoming a major issue for treatment facilities, he notes. I cant imagine that in
twenty years time we wont have treatment plants that are far more efficient.
What is more, wastewater facilities,
particularly in the United Kingdom,
increasingly face challenges related to
the disposal of the biosolids that result
from the treatment process. The less
sludge you have to dispose of, the better, Stuckey says.
As it turns out, the sambr process
may be able to address problems related
to energy consumption and sludge disposal as well. Compared with aerobic
systems, anaerobic mbrs produce significantly less sludge, Stuckey says,
because microorganisms in anaerobic

systems convert most of the potential

energy in the wastewater into methane.
By contrast, microorganisms in aerobic systems use the potential energy
to produce new cells. In fact, anaerobic systems typically produce more
energyin the form of methane
than they consume. If captured and
converted into electricity, the methane could be used to power the sambr
process, greatly reducing the amount
of energy needed to treat wastewater.
All of these factors seem to push the
technology toward using anaerobic
processes, Stuckey says.
Having worked extensively with
aerobic mbrs, engineers at Black and
Veatch were well aware of the technologys ability to produce high-quality
effluent that could be recycled, says
Frank Rogalla, a global practice and
technology leader in Black and Veatchs
office in Redhill, United Kingdom.
But the conventional mbr has a very
high energy need, Rogalla notes.
We wanted to come up with a more
sustainable approach. Because of the
sambrs potential for producing energy
while generating less sludge, Black and
Veatch opted to conduct an independent evaluation of the technology at
the bench-scale level.
The evaluation, which was conducted in the United Kingdom by a
doctoral student at Cranfield University from mid-2006 to early 2007, was
designed to test certain myths about
anaerobic reactors, Rogalla says. For
example, anaerobic treatment processes
are commonly thought to work only
on highly concentrated, warm wastewater. Thats why anaerobic treatment up to now has been limited to
industrial applications that have warm
substrates or are located in warm climates, Rogalla says. However, during
the bench-scale test, we found by concentrating our biomass, thanks to the
membrane, we could work at colder
Civil Engineering May 2008

T ECH NOL OGY

temperatures with dilute sewage and

still get excellent cod removal and low
sludge yields, he says.
The test involved a hybrid anaerobic mbr of 10.6 gal (40 L) that was
equipped with submerged membranes
as well as side stream membranes, that
is, membranes located outside of the
mbr. Continuously fed raw municipal sewage for 120 days, the mbr was
operated at three temperatures: 95F
(35C), 72F (22C), and 54F (12C).
Influent to the system contained
cod concentrations between 250 and
600 mg/L. The system achieved its
highest rate of cod removal (97 percent) while operating at 95F (35C).
However, the mbr produced stable
effluent with cod concentrations below

90 mg/L at temperatures as low as 54F

(12C). Contrary to expectations, the
membranes fouled less than membranes
typically do on aerobic mbrs, Rogalla
says, requiring less energy for scouring
the membranes. Although the results
are promising, Rogalla acknowledges
that a more comprehensive evaluation
of the process is needed to make sure
it really works as well as we think.
Scheduled to begin in August, the test
at Anglian Waters facility will involve
operating the 52,800 gpd (200 m/d)
sambr at various loading conditions to
see how it performs in the face of such
factors as differing organic loading rates
and hydraulic retention times. Moreover, the prototype facility will test four
types of membranes provided by dif-

ferent manufacturers. By operating the

process at full scale, the researchers hope
to optimize its design while developing
rigorous mass balances and energy
balances to carefully track all inputs and
outputs, Stuckey says.
Thanks to the grant from the Royal
Society, the project team has enough
money to pay for an operator to run the
system for one year and a doctoral student to evaluate laboratory results for
three years. If the results are positive,
the research team hopes to obtain additional funding to extend the operation
of the pilot project, Stuckey says. Ultimately, he notes, the goal is to install
and test the sambr technology at an
even larger treatment facility.
Jay Landers

research briefs
Horizontal Drilling May Locate
Natural Gas Reserves
orizontal directional drilling may be used to
reach natural gas trapped in portions of black
shale difficult to reach in northern Appalachia, significantly boosting the nations known natural gas reserves,
according to a team of researchers from Pennsylvania
State University and the State University of New York
(suny) at Fredonia. The team, led by Terry Engelder,
Ph.D, a professor of geosciences at Penn State, and Gary
Lash, Ph.D, a professor of geosciences at suny Fredonia, has estimated that a layer of shale known as the
Marcellus Formation that extends from southern New
York through western Pennsylvania, West Virginia,
and eastern Ohio may contain 168 to 516 trillion cu ft
(4.75 to 14.6 trillion m) of natural gas. The natural gas
industry has been aware of the ability of the Marcellus shale to store natural gas but has found it difficult
using traditional (vertical) drilling techniques to find
and reach the fractures in the shale that trap the gas.
The researchers believe that horizontal drilling, though
more expensive than vertical drilling, can encounter a
large series of these fractures sequentially, thus exposing multiple pockets of gas. The United States currently
produces roughly 30 trillion cu ft (850 billion m) of gas
per year; the research team estimates that the Marcellus

May 2008 Civil Engineering

Formation could produce as much as 50 trillion cu ft

(1.4 trillion m) per year.
Pennsylvania State University

Canadian Research Center Seeks

Best Ways of Reinforcing Masonry
he isis Canada Research Network (the acronym
denoting intelligent sensing for innovative structures) is working with Public Works and Government
Services Canada to evaluate the many different methods
currently being used to seismically retrofit the masonry
walls of historically important buildings across the nation.
The team will evaluate the performance of various seismic upgrade methods in the laboratory and determine
which ones are the most effective. Researchers will examine the inherent seismic capacity of the walls, the performance of traditional masonry anchors, the performance
of the walls during freeze-thaw cycles, and the performance of masonry walls that have been reinforced. They
will also test such anchorage assemblies as cementitious,
epoxy, and mechanical anchors, including steel and fiberreinforced polymers, to determine their effectiveness and
will develop a structural health monitoring system that
can be used universally on masonry walls in buildings of
historical importance.

isis Canada Research Network

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