Insights from Three Years of the Full-Scale Side-by-Side MABR Demonstration at the Ejby Mølle WRRF

The past decade of the wastewater industry has seen numerous innovations, many of which center around improvements in energy efficiency and process intensification for nutrient removal. The Membrane Aerated Biofilm Reactor (MABR) has  emerged as a technology that satisfies both of these goals and the number of MABR installations is growing rapidly (Lu et al., 2020); however, there remains a lack of detailed operational data to better understand the dynamics of the system and how different variables can affect performance (Martin and Nerenberg, 2012). VandCenter Syd (VCS) initiated a demonstration study of MABR technology at its 410,000 population equivalent facility Ejby Mølle WRRF (Odense, Denmark) in 2018. Two full-scale units from vendors OxyMem and SUEZ were installed and operated for approximately three years. Despite numerous developments in MABR technology, operational performance results from full-scale or pilot-size installations are still very scarce (Nerenberg, 2016). This paper provides a broad overview of results from operating two full-scale MABR units for three years at the Ejby Mølle WRRF.