Influences of acid–base property of membrane on interfacial interactions related with membrane fouling in a membrane bioreactor based on thermodynamic assessment

[Display omitted] •Total interaction energy monotonically decreases with membrane electron donor.•Total interaction energy is marginally affected by membrane electron acceptor.•Membrane electron donor is a reliable indicator predicting membrane fouling.•Fouling control shall improve membrane electron donor rather than hydrophilicity. Failure of membrane hydrophobicity in predicting membrane fouling requires a more reliable indicator. In this study, influences of membrane acid base (AB) property on interfacial interactions in two different interaction scenarios in a submerged membrane bioreactor (MBR) were studied according to thermodynamic approaches. It was found that both the polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) membrane and foulant samples in the MBR had relatively high electron donor (γ−) component and low electron acceptor (γ+) component. For both of interaction scenarios, AB interaction was the major component of the total interaction. The results showed that, the total interaction monotonically decreased with membrane γ−, while was marginally affected by membrane γ+, suggesting that γ− could act as a reliable indicator for membrane fouling prediction. This study suggested that membrane modification for fouling mitigation should orient to improving membrane surface γ− component rather than hydrophilicity.