This study focused on developing indicators to predict adhesive membrane fouling in a membrane bioreactor (MBR). Thermodynamic interactions between membrane surface and foulants in various interaction scenes were comprehensively evaluated. It was revealed that, the total interaction energy in contact could be considered as a critical value affecting adhesion of foulants. Surface hydrophilicity cannot be simply represented by water contact angle. Statistical analysis showed that membrane acid-based (AB) surface tension, Lifshitz-Van der waals (LW) surface tension, total tension, zeta potential and water contact angle had no apparent correlation with adhesive fouling, suggesting the infeasibility of these parameters as fouling predictors. It was found that, interaction between two identical membrane surface in water (Delta G(SWS)) and membrane surface electron donor tension (gamma(-)) strongly correlated with adhesive fouling, and could be reliable indicators to predict adhesive fouling. This study identified the relationships of series membrane surface properties with adhesive fouling in MBRs. (C) 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.