BACKGROUND: There is growing interest in employing heterogeneous Fenton-like catalysts in slurry to obtain higher activity. However, fine size particles create problems associated with recovery from the treated water. Therefore, it is highly desirable to develop a novel Fenton-like process that not only has high degradation efficiency of organic pollutants, but also allows for easily reusing the catalysts. RESULT: A new reactor was investigated by coupling the heterogeneous Fenton-like oxidation with membrane separation. Results showed that the FeY catalyst could be almost filtrated by a submerged micro-filtration membrane in the reactor to continuously activate H(2)O(2). For a FeY dose of 1 g L(-1) and a residence time of 120 min, the degradation efficiency of AO II reached 97%. CONCLUSIONS: In the new reactor, degradation of AO II occurred continuously and efficiently without an additional FeY separation process. The treatment capacity of this FeY catalyst for wastewater containing 100 mg L(-1) AO II in the reactor was estimated to be 82 times that of a reactor in which the catalyst could not be reused. The distinguishing technical feature of this reactor was the reuse of the Fenton-like catalyst. (C) 2011 Society of Chemical Industry