Modeling and simulation of phenol removal from wastewater using a membrane contactor as a bioreactor

Diverse methods have been introduced for phenol removal from wastewater. Among them, membrane bioreactors have attracted considerable attention in the last decade. In this study, modeling and simulation of a hollow fiber membrane contactor as a bioreactor was carried out. The effects of the various parameters such as flow rate, ratio of membrane porosity to tortuosity, membrane length, initial phenol concentration, number of fibers, and inner and outer radius of the membrane on phenol removal efficiency were studied. A proposed set of partial differential equations and related boundary conditions in the model were solved by the finite element method via simulation with computational fluid dynamics techniques. The simulation results were compared with existing empirical data from literature and acceptable agreement was observed. Based on the obtained results, increasing the initial concentration had a reverse impact on the phenol removal efficiency. However, increasing the cell phase flow rate slightly enhanced the removal efficiency. Moreover, extending the membrane length had a desirable effect. Also, augmentation of the number of fibers within the contactor initially increased and then decreased the efficiency.