Biological control of microbial attachment and membrane biofouling

• Main Author: Teo, Kai Wen.
• Other Authors: Liu Yu
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2011
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Environmental engineering
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/45419
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

The occurrence of biofouling is regarded as the bottleneck of membrane bioreactor technology as it contributes substantially to economic losses. From various reviews on biological methods of mitigating biofouling, the mechanism of inhibiting ATP was chosen for this study as it is inexpensive and less dependent on operating conditions. Chemical uncouplers have been proven to inhibit the formation of ATP, and among them, 3, 3’, 4’, 5 tetrachlorosalicylanilide (TCS) has demonstrated to be more effective and less toxic to the environment. Thereby, TCS was employed in this study to test on its effectiveness on biofilm detachment. The entire project then aimed to investigate how different TCS concentrations (0, 4, 6 and 8 mg/L) and different exposure times (2, 3, 4 hours) would affect detachment of biofilms with various ages of 6 hour to 24 hour.