The extractive membrane bioreactor can be used as a treatment of difficult organics in hostile wastewater. In this study, it was applied to phenol-contaminated saline water, where phenol is extracted from the feed stream through a dense membrane to the bioprocess, which is principally a biofilm on the downstream side of the membrane. Our study shows that uncontrolled biofilm growth (after 14 days of crossflow operation) can result in 42% reduction in phenol mass transfer. Biofilm control strategies such as reducing the inorganic loading rate and adopting a submerged aerated configuration to encourage membrane scouring were assessed in this study and limited the phenol mass transfer reduction to 13%.