Notice of RetractionEffect of Organic Loading on Membrane Fouling in Membrane Bioreactor for Berberine Pharmaceutical Wastewater Treatment

Notice of Retraction

After careful and considered review of the content of this paper by a duly constituted expert committee, this paper has been found to be in violation of IEEE´s Publication Principles.

We hereby retract the content of this paper. Reasonable effort should be made to remove all past references to this paper.

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In order to specify the effects of organic loading on membrane fouling, the relationships of organic loadings, activated sludge properties and membrane fouling rates were studied based on statistical analysis of the long-term operation data of a lab-scale MBR for berberine pharmaceutical wastewater treatment. Results showed that, the activated sludge properties were directly determined by organic loading rate (OLR) and berberine loading rate (BLR). And, the membrane fouling rates increased as the mixed liquor suspended solids (MLSS) and extracellular polymeric substances (EPS) increased, the critical point was 8.0 g/L and 150 mg/gVSS, respectively. The organic loading in terms of OLR and BLR had significant impacts on membrane fouling via modifying the activated sludge properties. In order to control the membrane fouling, the OLR and BLR applied should be lower than 2.0 kg/d and 60 g/d, respectively.