LAURUS MBR is a line of development of the LAURUS vertical bioreactor in which the separation of treated water from activated sludge is entrusted to a membrane module. The stages of biological treatment are arranged by height inside one vessel, and the membrane works at the final stage, holding the biomass inside the reactor.
The LAURUS platform gathers the stages of biological treatment not into several horizontal tanks but along the height of a single vertical vessel: the lower zones carry the preliminary biological conditioning of the effluent and denitrification, the middle and upper parts carry aerobic oxidation of the organics and nitrification, and the top zone separates the treated water from the biomass. The membrane module takes the last step of that layout.
It is meant for compact wastewater treatment where the plot is limited and the discharge requirements are stricter than usual: private houses, hotels, residential complexes, tourist facilities and small production sites. To the compactness of the vertical vessel the membrane module adds a higher degree of separation between the treated water and the sludge, and retention of the active biomass inside the reactor rather than beyond it.
In a classical horizontal scheme the zones, the chambers and the clarifiers stand apart and the water travels a long path through them; the plant takes up more room and the count of civil and process units grows. A tiered layout removes that chain of tanks, but it does not remove the last stage: the treated water still has to be parted from the biomass, and in a vertical vessel that falls to the top zone.
Settling as the means of that separation is a workable solution, yet a sensitive one on several counts at once: to the quality of the sludge, to hydraulic overloads, to flotation, to the carry-over of suspended solids and to a settling zone that works incorrectly. All of that belongs to the last step and to what happens to the sludge within it, not to the biology of the lower tiers of the vessel.
In the membrane version the phases are parted by a module at the final stage: the treated water passes through the membrane and the activated sludge stays in the bioreactor. The quality of clarification ceases to be governed entirely by the settling zone, and the risk of sludge and suspended solids being carried over falls compared with systems where that work is the only mechanism of separation. The stages below it the membrane does not replace.
The combination with the vertical vessel is what makes the subject of LAURUS MBR: the compactness comes from the tiered layout itself, while the membrane module adds to it a higher degree of separation between the treated water and the sludge. Neither of the two parts solves the task of the other — the vessel does not improve the parting of phases, and the membrane does not shrink the footprint. Hence the sites where the combination pays are described by two conditions at once.
The membrane holds the activated sludge inside the bioreactor, and this is its second action, separate from clarification: the biomass does not leave with the stream of treated water but stays in the system. For the biological process this is a matter of stability — it rests on the amount of active biomass the system has managed to keep. In the membrane version one and the same element performs both the parting and the retention, although these are two different demands on the plant.
The load on a hotel, an apart-hotel or a seasonal house changes abruptly, and the plant has to keep its stability under an uneven inflow. In the mountain, coastal and tourist districts of Georgia the plot for treatment facilities is often limited while the flow depends on the season, and the configuration is chosen for both conditions at once. In the same row stands an operating plant that works at its limit or already lets sludge out.
The set of ancillary elements is fixed by the project: biofilm media, internal recirculation, separated aeration, dissolved oxygen control, level and flow sensors. Control is assembled on automation with remote monitoring, and the oxygen, level, pressure and flow sensors are tied to SCADA. None of these elements belongs to the layout by necessity — it is a set from which a configuration is assembled for the site.
The second line is existing treatment facilities. Membrane separation and a vertical layout are considered not only as a new plant but as a way of upgrading what has already been built, where the geometry and the condition of the site allow it. The reservation is not a formal one: a retrofit runs up against the dimensions of the existing vessel and its condition rather than against the list of equipment.
LAURUS is SOLVIA's own technological development in the biological treatment of wastewater, and the platform has patent protection in Russia. LAURUS MBR is named as a line of development of that platform: membrane modules are applied in the LAURUS vertical bioreactors for a fuller separation of the treated water from the biomass. The internal design solutions, the calculated parameters and the particulars of the layout are not disclosed in open materials, so neither the dimensions of the vessel nor the parameters of the membrane module are given here.
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