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Aim of this research project AMBER, funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research under FKZ 1701A09 and 1701B09, is to develop and operate a small anaerobic wastewater treatment plant to treat high-strength industrial wastewater from small companies, mainly from food processing industry. To achieve high biomass concentrations and therefore higher space time yield membrane technology is used to separate the biomass. Two different types of membranes (flat sheet) are operated in parallel and compared; also the operating parameters of the anaerobic system are empirically determined. The pilot plant was built in a 20' container and equipped with one anaerobic reactor and two membrane reactors. One of these is containing a submerged polyether sulphone membrane module and the other one is containing a submerged ceramic membrane module. The cross flow to prevent or reduce the surface layer is realized by bio-gas compressed in a side channel blower. The permeate outlet of each submerged plate module is connected to an eccentric screw pump. The membranes can be controlled both via flow and via negative pressure. The utilized pumps can change the direction of rotation for backwashing the membranes with permeate. During the experimental phases the membranes are systematically tested and operated with different combinations of operational parameters. Variations are done in filtration flow, backwash flow, content of suspended solids (SS) in the reactor, filtration time and backwash time. The negative pressure while filtration and the positive pressure while backwashing are determined as significant monitoring parameters. The operation of the membrane modules with a TS content of 20 g/L led to consistently stable results for the PES-membrane with a flux of appr. 7.0 l/(m2 h) and a permeability of 52 l/(m2 h bar) and for the Ceramic-membrane with a flux of appr. 16.5 l/(m2 h) and a permeability of 41 l/(mexp 2) h bar). A content of SS of 27 g/L seemed to be a critical value for stable operation of the membranes because for both membrane types the critical pressure values were reached with higher filtration rates and the filtration process had to be stopped.