Improvement of transport phenomena and COD removal through the design of manifolds in membrane aerated biofilm reactors for sewage treatment

[Display omitted] •Computational Fluid Dynamics to Describe the Hydrodynamics of a MABR.•Strategy to Characterize and Design manifolds for MABR.•The Conical Wall Distributor Generates the Best Mass Transfer.•Improvement of COD removal efficiency in sewage treatment. The membrane aerated biofilm reactor (MABR) has demonstrated a huge potential in wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) due to biofilm stratification and high oxygen transfer efficiency. However, an inappropriate design can negatively impact hydrodynamic and mass transfer, hampering the reactor performance. This work is intended to enhance these phenomena through a rational design of inlet flow distributors (IFD) using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and mass-transfer simulations. Different IFDs are analyzed at macro and micromixing levels using the residence time distribution (RTD) test and CFD, respectively. It is found that the computed RTD curves agree with experimental data with an error