Aerated liquid, vertical flow

The early references to submerged membranes came from Japan. Ohkubo et al. (1988) obtained a patent describing hollow fibers in a vertical bundle in a vessel with air scour to vibrate the fibers to remove the cake. The first reported use of submerged hollow fibers in a wastewater membrane bioreactor (MBR) was by Yamamoto et al. (1989), who used fibers in a bundle and air bubbles for aeration, mixing, and induced liquid flow. Permeate was removed by suction. At that time the concept was more of a curiosity, but within a decade the submerged membrane has become the dominant approach for low-pressure membrane processing in the water and wastewater industry. 

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