Waste water treatment and reuse

Most wastewater treatment plants are centred on the use of biological processes, which make use of the capacity of cells (mainly bacteria) to biodegrade pollutants and obtain water with low impact (ecological and health wise) after discharge. These processes as constantly being upgraded to face new challenges, and are now reaching more hardly biodegradable compounds, micropollutants and xenobiotics. Further, combined biological and advanced physical and chemical processes are able to obtain high quality water. Membrane bioreactors will be a key issue for wastewater treatment and reuse. Beside the current approach using submerged membrane bioreactors, where research in terms of process monitoring and modelling is clearly needed for better reactor design (namely using contributions from computational fluid dynamics), operation and control (including inputs from advanced on-line monitoring), attention shall be focused on hybrid membrane bioreactors.