High‑Performance Wastewater Treatment for Demanding Industries
Reliable and sustainable industrial wastewater treatment starts with the right membrane technology. Our external MBR concept is tailored for industrial applications, offering you efficient removal of organic pollutants and nutrient loads, while providing the highest robustness and reliability.
With our external tubular UF modules, you can count on consistently high effluent quality and full regulatory compliance. The result: lower operational costs, fewer process interruptions, and greater peace of mind. Combined with our MBR membranes, you gain the capability to meet water‑reuse targets, reduce environmental impact, and keep your facility operating at peak performance.
Berghof Membranes brings broad experience implementing MBR solutions for treating wastewater across nearly every industrial sector. Our team understands the unique challenges posed by each type of industrial wastewater, allowing us to offer expert support in designing and operating external MBR systems. By tailoring our approach to your facility’s specific needs, we deliver customized solutions that optimize performance and ensure regulatory compliance, regardless of the industry.
Berghof Membranes specializes in external MBR systems, where the membrane modules are installed outside the bioreactor tank and operated with controlled crossflow velocity to ensure stable, high‑performance filtration. Our tubular UF technology for industrial MBR applications delivers significant advantages, particularly when treating challenging or variable industrial wastewater streams:
Unlike outside‑in submerged membranes, our inside‑out external tubular modules deliver higher fluxes with fewer cleanings and significantly reduced maintenance requirements. The cross‑flow operation allows the system to handle higher MLSS concentrations and reliably treat complex industrial wastewaters containing FOG, hardness, or elevated levels of recalcitrant compounds.
External filtration units are quick to install and do not require extensive civil works. All modules are fully accessible from the outside, making inspection and maintenance fast and straightforward, reducing system downtime to a minimum.
The enclosed design ensures a clean, odor‑free, and operator‑friendly working environment, with no direct exposure to wastewater. Moreover, the external MBR system can be fully automated — including CIP cleaning — since the modules remain in place and do not need to be removed from a membrane tank. This reduces operator intervention to an absolute minimum and makes the external MBR an ideal solution for decentralized installations and demanding industrial sites.
To reduce both short‑ and long‑term environmental impacts, industries worldwide are increasingly challenged by stricter wastewater regulations and rising treatment costs. In response, many facilities have implemented advanced on‑site wastewater treatment plants to ensure regulatory compliance, avoid sewer discharge fees, and decrease their overall water footprint through reuse.
MBR technology represents a highly efficient advancement over the conventional activated sludge process. By replacing clarifiers with tubular UF modules, MBR systems achieve major performance improvements: enhanced effluent quality, higher biodegradation rates, a significantly smaller footprint, reduced sludge generation, and expanded opportunities for water reuse. These advantages are crucial for meeting stringent discharge limits and realizing the economic benefits of water recycling across industrial sectors.
MBR installations can remove up to 99 % of COD, surpassing the 90 – 95% typical of conventional systems. High MLSS concentrations, even above 15 g/L, reduce footprint and excess sludge production. Elevated SRT produces optimal nitrification rates, often reducing ammonia concentrations to less than 1 mg/L in most situations. The membrane permeate contains virtually no suspended solids, turbidity, and an SDI of less than 3, making it ideal for downstream reverse osmosis if needed.
Our flexible, configurable UF systems adapt seamlessly to your site and are designed to meet your operational needs today while supporting future expansion. Expanding capacity with Berghof Membranes modules is quick, simple, and disruption‑free.
Many industrial facilities need to upgrade or retrofit their wastewater treatment plants due to stringent regulations, cost-efficient water reuse, and increased production causing hydraulic bottlenecks. Converting existing CASP or SBR processes into MBRs offers significant technical and economic benefits under the previous scenarios.
Existing systems can no longer meet regulatory requirements as effluent standards become increasingly stringent.
As the price of fresh water rises and municipal discharge fees increase, reusing treated water becomes increasingly attractive and economically viable.
Higher manufacturing output generates more wastewater, often exceeding the capacity of conventional treatment plants and creating a bottleneck for overall site production.
Under any of these circumstances, converting an existing CASP or SBR system into an MBR becomes the most advantageous solution, delivering clear technical and economic benefits. By coupling an external UF membrane system to the existing biological reactor, the plant can achieve significantly higher effluent quality while increasing overall treatment capacity by up to three times.
The external MBR concept offers undeniable advantages for retrofit and conversion projects:
The conversion process is fast, simple, and requires minimal civil works. The external MBR system connects directly to the existing plant infrastructure, ensuring a smooth and efficient retrofit with minimal disruption.
Decommissioning the existing clarifiers frees up more than enough space for the membrane filtration system. Because external MBRs operate at significantly higher biomass concentrations, they deliver more capacity within a much smaller footprint.
No additional membrane tank is required. By increasing the MLSS from the typical 3–4 g/L to 12–15 g/L, the treatment capacity can be boosted by a factor of 3 to 4 using the same tank volume. The only modification needed is an upgrade of the aeration system.
