Treatment of pharmaceutical industry process wastewater using the extractive membrane bioreactor

✍ Scribed by dos Santos, L. M. Freitas ;Biundo, G. Lo

• Publisher: American Institute of Chemical Engineers
• Year: 1999
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 574 KB
• Volume: 18
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0278-4491
• DOI: 10.1002/ep.670180118

✦ Synopsis

The Extractive Membrane Bioreactor (EMB) is an alternative, relatively new technology for dealing with a wide range of VOCs (and other non-volatile hydrophobic organics) present in harsh inorganic compositions [41 which combines extraction and biodegradation in a single system. This technology was invented at Iniperial College, London, IJX and it is now being commercialized by a spin-off company (Membrane Extraction Technology Ltd.) following successful pilot trials treating chemical industy wastewaters. The process is designed to remove toxic. poorly water-soluble organic compounds from waste streams using dense phase membranes. The membranes separate the waste stream and the biological inedium where specialized micro-organisms are kept under optimum conditions. Only the organic solvents to be destroyed cross the mellibrane into the biological side where they are converted by micro-organisms into harmless compounds. This is possible since inorganic species (acids. bases. charged ions or catalyst molecules) are not able to cross the meiiibrane. Furthermore,