3.3. Analyses of wastewater and membrane
3.3.1. GPC analysis of the raw and permeate water
GPC is a promising liquid chromatography technique that has
been developed in recent years and has proven useful for evaluating the molecular weight (MW) distribution of components during
various water treatment processes (Karis et al., 2002). As observed
in Table 3 main MW peaks were found in the raw wastewater in
this experiment, 194, 448 and 1007 Da. The data show that there
is little macromolecular organic matter existing in the BIWW,
which is consistent with the high biodegradability of this wastewater. After the AnMBR treatment, most of the organic matter had
been degraded/rejected, and there was only 1 peak remaining in
the permeate under each HRT. The MW of this peak decreased with
increasing HRT (2–10 d) from 409 to 39 Da, along with a drastic
reduction in the peak area. This indicates that the use of a longer
HRT results in a better degradation and rejection of the organic
matter, and thus, a better operational performance can be
obtained.