Anaerobic Membrane Bioreactors for Trace Organic Contaminants with Wastewater Treatment: A Review

Trace organic contaminants (TrOCs) in water environment such as pesticides, personal care products (PPCPs), and industrial materials have the characteristics including low concentration, wide distribution range, stable chemical structure. Anaerobic membrane bioreactor (AnMBR) is a new biological treatment method. The device combines the advantages of membrane filtration technology and biological treatment process. What the performance of AnMBR for TrOCs removal should be noticed. Some research is focusing on this question, and most of research found that AnMBR has shown great promises in the application of the removal of TrOCs in wastewater treatment. This paper briefly overviews recent processes of different types of AnMBR for the removal of different types of TrOCs with the influence of kinds of factors such as temperature, salinity etc. We mainly discussed the construction of AnMBR, the classification of TrOCs, and the removal efficiency of chemical oxygen demand (COD), the removal efficiency of TrOCs, and the biogas production. For the types of AnMBRs, the removal efficiency of COD and TrOCs and biogas production are excellent. Also, the removal efficiency of TrOCs is very related to the types of the contaminants. AnMBR is not only a practical choice for TrOCs removal, but also a good choice for following sustainable development because of the good biogas production. In addition, challenges of the future research are discussed also at the end of this review to give other researchers new perspectives and ideas.