The main objective of this research was to develop an advanced system for industrial wastewater treatment which could produce an excellent quality effluent. The subsequent objectives were: i) to reduce the initial concentration of carbon, nutrients, and color-forming substances compared to conventional treatment systems, ii) to investigate removal mechanisms in the new system under electric field, iii) to optimize the system by studying the relationship between various operating parameters. To achieve these objectives an innovative compact electro-anaerobic membrane bioreactor (EAnMBR) was designed and its high performance was researched in two operational configurations. In the EAnMBR, physicochemical, biological and electrokinetic processes interacted simultaneously permitting to control the effluent quality and sludge properties. The dark-color molasses-based wastewater containing the high concentrations of chemical oxygen demand (53,000 mg/L), total nitrogen (2,300 mg/L), total phosphorus (150 mg/L), was selected for this research and submitted to multi-phase studies. The research allowed to define optimal operational conditions leading to removal of carbon, nutrients by 99% and to complete discoloration in the EAnMBR system. The novel system was compared with anaerobic membrane bioreactor showing performance superiority of EAnMBR in respect to COD, sludge volume reduction and filterability by 10%, 54% and 7%, respectively. A separate experimental phase was dedicated to optimize the energy balance in the novel system by the surface response method.  The EAnMBR demonstrated outstanding results which make it a promising advanced wastewater treatment technology for various applications, e.g. in food, agriculture and defense industries.