Norit Airlift™ MBR: A New Order of Magnitude

As the leading external, dry-mounted, membrane bioreactor technology, the Norit Airlifttm MBR process sets a new order of magnitude. It reaches new performance levels in both municipal and industrial applications across the world, making ‘side stream membranes’ the preferred method of applying membranes to separate clean water from biological sludge. Operator friendliness and cleanability are key features which have shown their value in the actual running of the plants.Great leaps have been implemented in the intelligent design of these systems which dramatically increase the output, reduce the footprint, minimize the energy and chemical requirement while improving the simplicity and ease of operation. Filtration, back-flushing, draining and cleaning are all fully automated and reduce the plant operation to monitoring bioreactor activity and base membrane conditions besides normal maintenance of applied pumps and controls.Encompassing the above described characteristics, the new Norit Airlifttm MBR Megablock system surpasses current footprints known from submerged membranes and increase simplicity in running and operating large membrane plants.This paper will discuss the technical and operational challenges of a few representative plants, covering both the municipal and industrial MBR market segments.