Key issues of ultrafiltration membrane water treatment plant scale-up from laboratory and pilot plant results

2015 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 438-444 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chun Ming Chew ◽  
M. K. Aroua ◽  
M. A. Hussain

Industrial-scale ultrafiltration (UF) membrane systems have gained wide acceptance for producing safe drinking water. Laboratory and pilot plant studies are often carried out prior to the design of full-scale water treatment plants. Emphases are laid on how accurately these laboratory and pilot plant studies represent actual industrial-scale systems and the limitations. A case study which encompasses laboratory experiments, pilot plant and industrial-scale UF systems has been carried out in Malaysia using the same type of modified polyethersulfone hollow fiber UF membrane and surface raw water source. This research elaborates on the practical utilization of laboratory experiments and pilot plant results on the design and scale-up for industrial-scale water treatment plants. The results obtained in filtrate quality, transmembrane pressure and specific electricity requirements elucidate that both laboratory- and pilot-scale studies are essential to determine the detailed design criteria of an industrial-scale UF membrane water treatment plant with limitations that require attention. Design engineers are able to reduce the safety factor allowance and minimize cost by utilizing laboratory- and pilot-scale results for the scale-up of UF membrane water treatment plants.

2019 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 135-163
Author(s):  
Jader Martínez Girón ◽  
Jenny Vanessa Marín-Rivera ◽  
Mauricio Quintero-Angel

Population growth and urbanization pose a greater pressure for the treatment of drinking water. Additionally, different treatment units, such as decanters and filters, accumulate high concentrations of iron (Fe) and manganese (Mn), which in many cases can be discharged into the environment without any treatment when maintenance is performed. Therefore, this paper evaluates the effectiveness of vertical subsurface wetlands for Fe and Mn removal from wastewater in drinking water treatment plants, taking a pilot scale wetland with an ascending gravel bed with two types of plants: C. esculenta and P. australis in El Hormiguero (Cali, Colombia), as an example. The pilot system had three upstream vertical wetlands, two of them planted and the third one without a plant used as a control. The wetlands were arranged in parallel and each formed by three gravel beds of different diameter. The results showed no significant difference for the percentage of removal in the three wetlands for turbidity (98 %), Fe (90 %), dissolved Fe (97 %) and Mn (98 %). The dissolved oxygen presented a significant difference between the planted wetlands and the control. C. esculenta had the highest concentration of Fe in the root with (103.5 ± 20.8) µg/g ; while P. australis had the highest average of Fe concentrations in leaves and stem with (45.7 ± 24) µg/g and (41.4 ± 9.1) µg/g, respectively. It is concluded that subsurface wetlands can be an interesting alternative for wastewater treatment in the maintenance of drinking water treatment plants. However, more research is needed for the use of vegetation or some technologies for the removal or reduction of the pollutant load in wetlands, since each drinking water treatment plant will require a treatment system for wastewater, which in turn requires a wastewater treatment system as well.


2010 ◽  
Vol 10 (6) ◽  
pp. 961-968 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. E. Drewes ◽  
J. A. McDonald ◽  
T. Trinh ◽  
M. V. Storey ◽  
S. J. Khan

A pilot-scale plant was employed to validate the performance of a proposed full-scale advanced water treatment plant (AWTP) in Sydney, Australia. The primary aim of this study was to develop a chemical monitoring program that can demonstrate proper plant operation resulting in the removal of priority chemical constituents in the product water. The feed water quality to the pilot plant was tertiary-treated effluent from a wastewater treatment plant. The unit processes of the AWTP were comprised of an integrated membrane system (ultrafiltration, reverse osmosis) followed by final chlorination generating a water quality that does not present a source of human or environmental health concern. The chemical monitoring program was undertaken over 6 weeks during pilot plant operation and involved the quantitative analysis of pharmaceuticals and personal care products, steroidal hormones, industrial chemicals, pesticides, N-nitrosamines and halomethanes. The first phase consisted of baseline monitoring of target compounds to quantify influent concentrations in feed waters to the plant. This was followed by a period of validation monitoring utilising indicator chemicals and surrogate measures suitable to assess proper process performance at various stages of the AWTP. This effort was supported by challenge testing experiments to further validate removal of a series of indicator chemicals by reverse osmosis. This pilot-scale study demonstrated a simplified analytical approach that can be employed to assure proper operation of advanced water treatment processes and the absence of trace organic chemicals.


2002 ◽  
Vol 2 (5-6) ◽  
pp. 193-199
Author(s):  
M.J. Yu ◽  
H.M. Cho ◽  
J.Y. Koo ◽  
I.S. Han ◽  
E.M. Gwon ◽  
...  

Recently, Seoul city has tried to modify and upgrade the existing facilities and utilities and to improve the established water treatment plants, instead of application of a new treatment process. These efforts have finally lowered the turbidity of finished water below 0.1NTU. Small lab-scale and pilot-scale experiments have been conducted and they have provided optimum parameters for the design and operation of drinking water treatment plants. In addition, quantitative and/or trace analysis technologies developed for monitoring water quality of effluent from unit processes and automization of facilities, have contributed to the improvement of turbidity in drinking water. The Kueui water treatment plant, one of the drinking water treatment plants in Seoul, produces finished water with 0.08 NTU. It results from the operators' continuous endeavor to lower the turbidity in a scale of 0.01 NTU. The data for 12 months indicated that turbidity of settled water was less than 1.16 NTU and that of filtered water was less than 0.12 NTU for 95% of the period. Sedimentation basins and sand filters satisfy the recommended turbidity criteria, 2 NTU and 0.3 NTU, respectively. Also Kueui water treatment plant has focused on the control of organic matters to decrease in DBPs and on the removal of microorganisms.


2011 ◽  
Vol 63 (3) ◽  
pp. 573-579 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. E. Drewes ◽  
J. A. McDonald ◽  
T. Trinh ◽  
M. V. Storey ◽  
S. J. Khan

A pilot-scale plant was employed to validate the performance of a proposed full-scale advanced water treatment plant (AWTP) in Sydney, Australia. The primary aim of this study was to develop a chemical monitoring program that can demonstrate proper plant operation resulting in the removal of priority chemical constituents in the product water. The feed water quality to the pilot plant was tertiary-treated effluent from a wastewater treatment plant. The unit processes of the AWTP were comprised of an integrated membrane system (ultrafiltration, reverse osmosis) followed by final chlorination generating a water quality that does not present a source of human or environmental health concern. The chemical monitoring program was undertaken over 6 weeks during pilot plant operation and involved the quantitative analysis of pharmaceuticals and personal care products, steroidal hormones, industrial chemicals, pesticides, N-nitrosamines and halomethanes. The first phase consisted of baseline monitoring of target compounds to quantify influent concentrations in feed waters to the plant. This was followed by a period of validation monitoring utilising indicator chemicals and surrogate measures suitable to assess proper process performance at various stages of the AWTP. This effort was supported by challenge testing experiments to further validate removal of a series of indicator chemicals by reverse osmosis. This pilot-scale study demonstrated a simplified analytical approach that can be employed to assure proper operation of advanced water treatment processes and the absence of trace organic chemicals.


1998 ◽  
Vol 37 (9) ◽  
pp. 105-112 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana María Ingallinella ◽  
Luis María Stecca ◽  
Martin Wegelin

This paper presents the methodology used for the rehabilitation of the pretreatment stage in a water treatment plant for a village located in Bolivia which has 3500 inhabitants. The treatment plant was initially composed by horizontal-flow roughing filters and slow sand filters, but due to the high contents of colloidal turbidity of the providing source, it did not work properly. A plan of rehabilitation was made which comprised laboratory tests, pilot tests and proposal of modifications based on the results of previous stages. The laboratory tests were made in order to find the optimum conditions to coagulate the raw water. It was found that horizontal-flow roughing filters must be turned into up-flow roughing filters, so a pilot plant was built and was operated for three months in order to find suitable design parameters. The results obtained obtained during the operation of the pilot plant and the proposal of modifications are presented. The results of operation of the final plant, which are also reported, demonstrated the advantages of the up-flow roughing filtration as a pretreatment stage when it is necessary to add chemical products in small treatment plants.


2013 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 549-556 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kaveh Sookhak Lari ◽  
Morteza Kargar

High-rate lamella settlers in clarifiers and triple media filters have been implemented in Isfahan water treatment plant (known as ‘Baba-Sheikh-Ali’) in Iran to upgrade existing clarification/filtration processes during the recent years. The applied technologies are mainly used to reduce finished water turbidity as the primary regional criterion on water quality. However, application of both technologies faced some operational limitations since they began to work. These problems are due to the existing layout of the process units and available materials. The current study focuses on performance of restricted application of the two technologies with respect to turbidity removal. Online measured turbidity data from a two-year field observation (since March 2010) are used. In particular, results show a more promising and long-term effect on turbidity removal due to tripling filter media rather than application of the lamella settlers in clarifiers. The reasons for these observations are discussed.


2019 ◽  
Vol 100 ◽  
pp. 00019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Renata Gmurkowska

During water treatment a large amount of sludge is created – in the form of sewage and sediments. The largest amounts of sludge are produced during coagulation, ozonation and backwashing rapid filters. The quality and quantity of treated water, the type and dose of used coagulants are factors affecting the quantity, composition and properties of the sludge. Sludge produced during processing of drinking water is important problem and their quantity has been increasing. The study focuses on characteristics of water treatment sludge from four water treatment plants in Cracow. It includes theoretical and experimental part. The first part is based on analysis of literature and information obtained from MPWiK [3]. The second experimental part, concerns the analysis of dry matter, organic dry matter, capillary suction time and visual parameters: the color and consistency of the sludge. Result shows that every sludge contains organic matter. The highest concentrations of organic compounds and the largest diversity has been observed in the sludge collected in the Water Treatment Plant Raba, reaching even up to 70% of organic compounds in the dry mass of sludge.


2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 93-101
Author(s):  
Paulami De

This article addresses methods to adjust operating requirements in water treatment plants (WTPs) in order to increase the efficiency of water treatment plants based on the nature of the water inflows into the systems. In the past, various studies have suggested that the quality of water inflow into the WTP has an impact on the efficiency and economic viability of operating treatment plants. Among all other quality parameters, the concentration of dissolved oxygen (DO) is one of the basic indicators about the overall quality of the water. Identification of a temporal pattern can help the engineers to adapt the WTP operations and can save the unnecessary wasting of plant resources. That is why the present article has proposed a new model that can predict the temporal patterns of various chemical parameters with the help of an analytic neuronal network. The model was applied to the case of a WTP that responds to a peri-urban catchment, leading to regular variations in the DO of water inflow. According to the performance metrics utilized the model was able to predict the temporal pattern at a lag of 1 hour.


2017 ◽  
Vol 105 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohammed S. Aljohani

AbstractSilica scaling deposition in industrial water systems is one of the biggest challenges facing the water treatment industry due the low solubility of the scalants in the feed waters. In this preliminary work, we investigated the effectiveness of the ionizing radiation induced removal of silica in water sample from the Salbukh, Saudi Arabia, water treatment plant by using metallic iron as the source of ferric hydroxide to co-precipitate the silica. The influence of several reaction parameters, i.e. iron powder dosage, radiation dose, initial pH and equilibrium pH effect were investigated. In the optimum conditions, up to 75% of silica was removed. This preliminary study showed that this environmentally friendly process is effective in silica removal from underground water.


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