Integrated mathematical model of a MBR reactor including biopolymer kinetics and membrane fouling

This paper briefly describes an integrated mathematical model of an immersed membrane bioreactor (MBR) with hollow fibre outside-in membranes. The integrated model is composed of three interconnected submodels: the activated sludge model (ASM) extended with soluble and bound biopolymer kinetics, the membrane fouling model, and the interface model relating cake backtransport rate to air-scour intensity and specific cake resistance to concentration of extracellular polymeric substances (EPS). The integrated model is simulated on the plant layout used in the BSM-MBR benchmark model of Maere et al. (2011) and predicts similar effluent quality to BSM-MBR whilst additionally enabling predictions of the transmembrane pressure (TMP) and of the effects of various operating conditions on membrane fouling.