PACT MBR Delivers New Design and Operating Criteria for Reuse of Refinery and Petrochemical Wastewater

摘要

Water scarcity and environmental regulations are becoming strong drivers for reusing refinery wastewater. This end use requires multiple treatment steps not amendable to space constraints at many facilities. For this reason, Siemens undertook a 3-year study aimed at combining these steps into a single, robust and compact treatment process, for either a brownfield upgrade or greenfield installation, to deliver treated water quality suitable for reverse osmosis (RO) / reuse. The focus of this research effort was on current ultrafiltration (UF) materials and their abrasion resistance when operated as a biomass/powdered activated carbon membrane bioreactor (MBR). This paper presents results of a 3-year study demonstrating the successful performance of biomass/powdered activated carbon MBR using submerged ceramic membranes. Effluent chemical oxygen demand (COD), turbidity, silt density index (SDI), transmembrane pressure (TMP), and fouling rate trends are presented, and footprint and total installed cost comparisons to traditional treatment approaches are made.