The first known variant of the AnMBR was developed by Dorr-Oliver in 1980, specifically to treat wastewater with high organic loads, specifically, dairy wastewater. Due to the high cost of membranes, the technology was never applied on a larger commercial scale, only going through laboratory and pilot scale trials.
There are three main configurations of the AnMBR, each with a different location of the membrane unit. The variants all have their own advantages and disadvantages both in terms of cost and operability.