To explore the cost reduction of water reclamation and reuse facilities in developing countries, a simple ceramic filter made of local materials, such as clay and rice bran, was used in a membrane bioreactor (MBR) process. The feasibility of applying suction filtration to an MBR with a simple ceramic filter was examined by a laboratory-scale experiment; successful results using gravity filtration were reported in a previous paper. The BOD removal performance was satisfactory and demonstrated the feasibility of reusing effluent water for many purposes. The MBR operation with a flux less than 0.2 m/d showed a lower risk of fouling; increasing the flux caused an increase in fouling risk. The suction filtration and gravity filtration results were compared using the total resistance of the filter ( R ) and the resistance change rate ( dR/dt ). The R and dR/dt values were estimated higher in the suction filtration compared to those in the gravity filtration. The high dR/dt seemed to cause the necessity of the filter cleaning. The gravity filtration was suggested to be a more advantageous operation than the suction filtration in MBR using the simple ceramic filter.
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