Advanced bioreactor design and operation in wastewater treatment
plants (WWTPs) is essential in order to develop proper environmental
conditions so that the most desirable microorganisms
can be selected for and maintained under adequate physiological
conditions. This extends to the contact with the stream to be treated,
controlling mass transfer and reactor performance to achieve
the treatment goal at full scale. Until recently, biological reactors
in wastewater treatment have been considered as ‘‘black boxes’’,
their functionality depending only on empirical knowledge, and
hence they are difficult to predict and control. Even now their performance
can only be evaluated by applying material balances.
Now advanced bioreactor design can take advantage of compartmentalisation
and the use of membranes to confine the key microorganisms
in the process to a bioreactor (Barber and Stuckey, 1999;
Vyrides et al., 2010)