Application of MBR for hospital wastewater treatment in China Original Research Article

In China, the number of hospitals has increased to 19,712 in 2008, with the production of hospital wastewater reaching 1.29 × 106 m3/d. Membrane bioreactor (MBR) technology presents a more efficient system at removing pathological microorganism compared with existing wastewater treatment systems. In the past 8 yr, over 50 MBR plants have been successfully built for hospital wastewater treatments, with the capacity ranging from 20 to 2000 m3/d. MBR can effectively save disinfectant consumption (chlorine addition can decrease to 1.0 mg/L), shorten the reaction time (approximately 1.5 min, 2.5–5% of conventional wastewater treatment process), and attain a good effect of inactivation of microorganism. Higher disinfection efficacy is achieved in MBR effluents at lower dose of disinfectant with less disinfection by-products (DBPs). Moreover, when capacity of MBR plants increases from 20 to 1000 m3/d, their operating cost decreases sharply.