Abstract: In view of the problem of membrane fouling in the long-term operation of membrane bioreac-tor ( MBR) ,the causes and influencing factors of membrane fouling in MBR were described. The mech-anism of reducing membrane fouling in electrically coupled membrane bioreactor ( EMBR) was ana-lyzed,and the inhibitory effects of conductive membrane and self-generated electric field on membranefouling were introduced. The analysis shows that EMBR can control membrane fouling in situ throughelectrochemical actions such as electroosmosis,electrophoresis,electrooxidation and electrochemicalquorum quenching. The application of the self-generated electric field of microbial fuel cell ( MFC) inEMBR can reduce membrane fouling and recover part of energy in the form of electric energy. The ap-plication of conductive membrane optimizes the structure of EMBR. The MFC-MBR coupling processwith self-generated electric field has a good application prospect. Close-