This study examines the feasibility of a novel nanofiltration membrane bioreactor (NF-MBR) followed by reverse osmosis (RO) process for water reclamation at 90% recovery and using an ultrafiltration MBR (UF-MBR)+RO as baseline for comparison. Both MBRs adopted the same external hollow fiber membrane configurations and operating conditions. The collected permeates of the MBRs were subsequently fed to the respective RO systems. The results showed that the NF-MBR (operated at a constant flux of 10 L/m²h) achieved superior MBR permeate quality due to enhanced biodegradation and high rejection capacity of the NF membrane, leading to lower RO fouling rates (∼3.3 times) as compared to the UF-MBR. Further analysis indicated that the cake layer fouling that caused the cake-enhanced osmotic pressure (CEOP) effect contributed predominantly to the transmembrane pressure (TMP) increase in the NF-MBR, while irreversible pore fouling was the major reason for UF membrane fouling. Furthermore, it was found that the biopolymers (i.e., organics with MW > 10 kDa) were the main components present in the foulants of the NF/UF membranes and RO membranes. The analysis indicated that the NF-MBR + RO system at recovery of 90% has comparable energy consumption as the UF-MBR + RO system at recovery of 75%. Our findings proved the feasibility of the NF-MBR + RO for water reclamation at a high recovery rate.

这项研究检查了新型纳滤膜生物反应器（NF-MBR）继之以反渗透（RO）工艺以90％的回收率进行水回收的可行性，并使用超滤MBR（UF-MBR）+ RO作为基线进行比较。两种MBR均采用相同的外部中空纤维膜配置和操作条件。随后将收集的MBR渗透物送入相应的反渗透系统。结果表明，NF-MBR（以10 L / m ²的恒定通量运行h）由于增强的生物降解和NF膜的高截留能力，因此获得了优异的MBR渗透质量，与UF-MBR相比，导致较低的RO结垢率（约3.3倍）。进一步的分析表明，导致滤饼渗透压（CEOP）效应的滤饼层结垢主要是导致NF-MBR中跨膜压（TMP）升高的原因，而不可逆的孔垢是造成UF膜结垢的主要原因。此外，发现生物聚合物（即MW> 10 kDa的有机物）是NF / UF膜和RO膜污垢物中的主要成分。分析表明，回收率达到90％时，NF-MBR + RO系统的能耗与回收率达到75％时的UF-MBR + RO系统相当。