Experiences with the World’s Largest Municipal Waste Water Treatment Plant Using Membrane Technology

With the commissioning of the waste water treatment plant Nordkanal, which has been dimensioned for a design capacity of 80,000 population equivalents, new worldwide standards for the implementation of large membrane-activated sludge plants have been created both from a technical and from an economic point of view. The hitherto successful operation of this plant has already now contributed towards this technology becoming suitable for use in large waste water treatment plants. The now two years the waste water treatment plant Nordkanal has been in operation have once again demonstrated that even on a large scale, membrane-activated sludge plants are able to reliably produce purified effluent of excellent quality, while simultaneously providing a small-sized design. They prove advantageous everywhere small-sized designs are sought after and the purified effluent has to meet high or special requirements. Wherever purification requirements are intensified in the foreseeable future, whether with regard to the hygienisation of effluent, or in the framework of re-using purified waste water as industrial water or potable water or in order to protect natural drinking water resources from critical anthropogenic impacts, the membrane bioreactor process or membrane filtration is trend setting and will increasingly gain in importance.