Résumé
In wastewater treatment, the membrane bioreactor (MBR) holds the potential to become one of the new generation processes, ensuring effluent quality and disinfection of sufficiently high levels to allow water reuse and recycle. Furthermore, the possibility to operate with high biomass concentrations (2 to 5 times higher than in conventional activated sludge process, CAS) allows to impose high solid retention times(SRT) that can be beneficial to a sludge production reduction and so to a reduction of disposal costs. These non-conventional operating conditions (high SRT) can also induce different sludge characteristics and dewatering aptitude, which are essential parameters for the optimization of the sludge post-treatment, like mechanical dewatering. The objective of this work was to study the performances of a complete sludge retention membrane bioreactor, in terms of organic removal efficiency, sludge production and sludge dewaterability. The adaptability of Activated Sludge Model 3 (ASM3) to provide good prediction results of high SRT-MBR was studied. Typical parameters adopted to describe sludge dewaterability were quantified and compared with the conventional activated sludge process (CAS).