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Abstract:

Anaerobic treatment is a well-established, environmentally friendly and economically viable process for the degradation of organic waste. The main practical concern when using anaerobic technologies is process instability leading to treatment failure. Research on improved reactor start-up and especially on recovery of failing reactors (e.g., as a result of changed influent characteristics) is, hence, fundamental to further boost anaerobic treatment technology. To improve reactor management, there is a demand for accurate monitoring tools for both daily reactor follow-up and in-depth process troubleshooting. Current monitoring tools are generally not predictive and do not allow process upsets to be alleviated. Furthermore, they are insufficiently targeted at methanogens and, if they are, require complex and time-consuming quantification methods. Anaerobic membrane bioreactors (AnMBRs) are a specific variant of high-rate anaerobic wastewater treatment systems that combine an anaerobic bioreactor with a membrane filtration unit. Although these reactors have been successfully implemented in full-scale during the last decade, an important aspect hampering their more widespread application is membrane fouling, which increases operational costs. The overall aim of this PhD thesis is to provide useful monitoring tools to tackle the aforementioned limitations of anaerobic (membrane) bioreactors and increase their applicability.