The College of Engineering has installed a Membrane bioreactor (MBR) that is a combination of membrane processes like microfiltration or ultrafiltration with a biological wastewater treatment process, the activated sludge process where it is now widely used for municipal and industrial wastewater treatment. This filter was installed to be used at the department of chemical engineering’s laboratory for being very useful for conducting experiments by the undergraduate and postgraduate students. This initiative comes within the mechanism of cooperation between the Department of Environment and Water at the Ministry of Science and Technology and the Department of Chemical Engineering at the College of Engineering.
It is worth mentioning that the Membrane bioreactor technology is based on a simple filtration procedure through a membrane, and its pores are of different sizes depending on the type of water to be purified and the chosen process allowing water to pass from one side to another. The membranes can be organic or metal and act as a selective separation barrier where the solid materials or residues are kept on the other side, so this process of wastewater treatment allows the development of solutions for water reuse in urban and agricultural areas, irrigation and other industrial uses.