Investigation of efficiency of membrane bioreactors in waste water treatment plants

Membrane bioreactor (MBR) technology was first developed commercially in the late 1960s, and in recent years it has been used in a wide range of areas in domestic and industrial areas. In this advanced treatment system, the treated water after secondary treatment is filtered using membrane filtration material. In comparison to classical activated sludge methods, it has advantages such as good quality obtained outlet water, saving space in the facility, low waiting times, high amount of suspended solids removal and being able to work at high sludge ages. In this thesis, the flow structure inside the membrane bioreactor in wastewater treatment plants is examined and compared with the classical activated sludge system. The submerged membrane bioreactor system with a hollow fiber membrane was modeled using the open source Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) software OpenFOAM, and the numerical results were verified by comparing with the results available in the literature. Eventually, the efficiency of the submerged membrane bioreactor designed with the hollow fiber membrane module was examined and the plant data were evaluated.