Pilot-plant study of a high recovery membrane filtration process for drinking water treatment

2000 ◽  
Vol 41 (10-11) ◽  
pp. 77-84 ◽  
Author(s):  
J.Y. Huang ◽  
S. Takizawa ◽  
K. Fujita

Successful application of energy efficient dead-end micro-filtration (MF), which does not require recirculation like cross-flow filtration, depends on achieving high recovery rates. In this study, two different types of pilot scale membrane systems (horizontally and vertically stretched membrane filters) were evaluated based on the effects of pre-chlorination, intermittent chlorination and circulation flow by air-scrubbing. Additionally, the effects of operating factors including physical cleaning and chemical cleaning on membrane fouling were examined. The vertically stretched membranes showed better performance than horizontally stretched membranes at filtration fluxes of either 0.55 m/day or 0.78 m/day even under 2.6 to 27.5°C and raw water turbidity higher than 300 units, as long as intermittent chlorination (10 mg/l once a week) along with the circulation flow by air-scrubbing (once in 30 minutes) in the housing were employed. It was demonstrated that the vertically stretched membranes have been operated for one year without chemical cleaning of the membranes, wherein the recovery of raw water as a filtrate was 97.0% or 98.9%.

2000 ◽  
Vol 41 (10-11) ◽  
pp. 59-67 ◽  
Author(s):  
Y. Kaiya ◽  
Y. Itoh ◽  
S. Takizawa ◽  
K. Fujita ◽  
T. Tagawa

A study was conducted on characteristics of membrane-fouling matter and chemical cleaning of fouled membranes. The membranes were those used for the filtration of raw water taken from the Lake Kitaura, Ibaraki, Japan. Analysis of the molecular weight distribution of extracted foulants by ultrafilters showed that 23% of organic matter was in the fraction exceeding a molecular weight of 100,000 daltons and 33% between 10,000 to 100,000 daltons. Analysis by gel permeation chromatography (GPC) revealed a void peak and five peaks at a molecular weight of less than 6,000 daltons. Assessment by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy( FTIR) and pyrolysis gas chromatography mass spectrometry (Py-GC-MS) revealed that organic fouling matter contained polysaccharides, proteins, amino sugars and aromatic compounds that constitute humic substances. A comparison of the apparent molecular weight distribution and the FTIR spectra of both the raw water and fouled membrane extracts revealed the attachment of membrane-fouling matter nonexistent in the raw water, which was considered to be extracellular organic matter. Chemical cleaning of fouled membranes suggested that sodium hypochlorite and hydrogen peroxide were effective for the recovery of membrane permeability. In most of the experiments, the higher the cleaning temperature is between 5°C and 40°C, the more effective the chemical cleaning. However, chemical cleaning by a mixture of 1%-NaOCl and 4%-NaOH showed a comparable cleaning efficiency at 5°C as chemical cleaning at 40°C after two hours.


2013 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 453-460 ◽  
Author(s):  
I. Rahman ◽  
S. Ndiongue ◽  
X. Jin ◽  
M. I. Van Dyke ◽  
W. B. Anderson ◽  
...  

Fouling is a major challenge for low-pressure membrane drinking water treatment systems. Previous research has demonstrated that under the right conditions, biofiltration is an effective method to reduce fouling of low-pressure polymeric membranes. This study provides additional insight into the effect of biofiltration as a pretreatment for fouling reduction by using river water with different raw water quality characteristics than has been examined in previous studies. Two parallel pilot-scale dual media (sand/anthracite) biological filters were operated continuously over a period of 14 months. Liquid chromatography–organic carbon detection analysis confirmed that the parallel biofilters performed similarly with both averaging on 21% biopolymer removal. Raw and treated water biopolymer concentrations were correlated, with increased absolute removals occurring at higher raw water concentrations. Ultrafiltration (UF) membrane fouling experiments showed substantial improvement in performance following biofiltration pretreatment by reducing hydraulically irreversible and reversible fouling rates by 14–68% and 8–55%, respectively. The results also reaffirm the importance of biopolymers at concentrations as low as ∼0.1 mg/L on irreversible and reversible UF membrane fouling and a minimal impact of humic substances.


2012 ◽  
Vol 212-213 ◽  
pp. 600-604
Author(s):  
Ya Li Song ◽  
Bing Zhi Dong ◽  
Nai Yun Gao ◽  
Yu Fang Yang ◽  
Chun Chang

The study concerns on drinking water treatment with combining ozonation process, coagulation and Microfiltration (MF) of Poly-vinylidene Fluoride (PVDF) in a dead-end filtration. The pilot-scale process consists of several parts: pre-ozonation, coagulation, sedimentation and microfiltration membrane separation. Ozone of 0.5mg/l and alum of 10 mg/l were added into raw water. The experience focuses on investigation of permeate water quality and variation of trans-membrane pressure (TMP). The results of the study showed that good permeate quality were fulfilled. Turbidity of permeate was consistently below 0.1 NTU. The MF membrane removed iron perfectly, which was below 0.3 mg/l. The reduction of manganese and CODMn met the China Drinking Water Regulations. Additionally, TMP was stable during filtration for a long time and ozone could delay membrane fouling. Chemical cleaning of membrane could decrease TMP to initial level, and chemical analysis for chemical cleaning solution shown that organic matters and manganese caused membrane fouling.


2005 ◽  
Vol 5 (5) ◽  
pp. 1-8 ◽  
Author(s):  
K.Y. Choi ◽  
B.A. Dempsey

The objective of the research was to evaluate in-line coagulation to improve performance during ultrafiltration (UF). In-line coagulation means use of coagulants without removal of coagulated solids prior to UF. Performance was evaluated by removal of contaminants (water quality) and by resistance to filtration and recovery of flux after hydraulic or chemical cleaning (water production). We hypothesized that coagulation conditions inappropriate for conventional treatment, in particular under-dosing conditions that produce particles that neither settle nor are removed in rapid sand filters, would be effective for in-line coagulation prior to UF. A variety of pre-treatment processes for UF have been investigated including coagulation, powdered activated carbon (PAC) or granular activated carbon (GAC), adsorption on iron oxides or other pre-formed settleable solid phases, or ozonation. Coagulation pre-treatment is often used for removal of fouling substances prior to NF or RO. It has been reported that effective conventional coagulation conditions produced larger particles and this reduced fouling during membrane filtration by reducing adsorption in membrane pores, increasing cake porosity, and increasing transport of foulants away from the membrane surface. However, aggregates produced under sweep floc conditions were more compressible than for charge neutralization conditions, resulting in compaction when the membrane filtration system was pressurized. It was known that the coagulated suspension under either charge-neutralization or sweep floc condition showed similar steady-state flux under the cross-flow microfiltration mode. Another report on the concept of critical floc size suggested that flocs need to reach a certain critical size before MF, otherwise membranes can be irreversibly clogged by the coagulant solids. The authors were motivated to study the effect of various coagulation conditions on the performance of a membrane filtration system.


2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 855-863 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. Miyoshi ◽  
Y. Takahashi ◽  
T. Suzuki ◽  
R. Nitisoravut ◽  
C. Polprasert

Abstract This study investigated the performance of a hybrid membrane filtration system to produce industrial water from highly-colored surface water. The system consists of a membrane filtration process with appropriate pretreatments, including coagulation, pre-chlorination, and anion exchange (IE) process. The results of the pilot-scale experiments revealed that the hybrid system can produce treated water with color of around 5 Pt-Co, dissolved manganese concentration of no more than 0.05 mg/L, and a silt density index (SDI) of no more than 5 when sufficient coagulant and sodium hypochlorite were dosed. Although the IE process effectively reduced the color of the water, a moderate increase in the color of the IE effluent was observed when there was a significant increase in the color of the raw water. This resulted in a severe membrane fouling, which was likely to be attributed to the excess production of inorganic sludge associated with the increased coagulant dosage required to achieve sufficient reduction of color. Such severe membrane fouling can be controlled by optimising the backwashing and relaxation frequencies during the membrane filtration. These results indicate that the hybrid system proposed is a suitable technology for treating highly-colored surface water.


2000 ◽  
Vol 41 (10-11) ◽  
pp. 173-180 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. Vera ◽  
S. Delgado ◽  
S. Elmaleh

A novel technique was tested for reducing tubular mineral membrane fouling by injecting gas into a cross-flow stream. The injected gas is thought to form complex hydrodynamic conditions inside the microfiltration module, which increase the wall shear stress, preventing the membrane fouling and enhancing the microfiltration mass transfer. The experimental study was carried out with biologically treated wastewater filtered through a tubular inorganic membrane (Carbosep M14). The flux, monotonously increasing with gas velocity, was more than tripled. New dimensionless quantities of shear stress number and resistance number were developed by generalisation of the dimensional analysis already carried out for the steady state flux of classical unsparged cross-flow filtration. A unique formalism allowed then interpreting the experimental results of both classical diphasic filtration and sparged filtration. The main limiting mass transport process was due to the solid content.


Author(s):  
Haruka Takeuchi ◽  
Naoyuki Yamashita ◽  
Norihide Nakada ◽  
Hiroaki Tanaka

This study investigated the removal characteristics of N-Nitrosamines and their precursors at three pilot-scale water reclamation plants. These plants applies different integrated membrane systems: (1) microfiltration (MF)/nanofiltration (NF)/reverse osmosis (RO) membrane; (2) sand filtration/three-stage RO; and (3) ultrafiltration (UF)/NF and UF/RO. Variable removal of N-Nitrosodimethylamine (NDMA) by the RO processes could be attributed to membrane fouling and the feed water temperature. The effect of membrane fouling on N-Nitrosamine removal was extensively evaluated at one of the plants by conducting one month of operation and chemical cleaning of the RO element. Membrane fouling enhanced N-Nitrosamine removal by the pilot-scale RO process. This finding contributes to better understanding of the variable removal of NDMA by RO processes. This study also investigated the removal characteristics of N-Nitrosamine precursors. The NF and RO processes greatly reduced NDMA formation potential (FP), but the UF process had little effect. The contributions of MF, NF, and RO processes for reducing FPs of NDMA, N-Nitrosopyrrolidine and N-Nitrosodiethylamine were different, suggesting different size distributions of their precursors.


Processes ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (5) ◽  
pp. 545 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rathmalgodage Thejani Nilusha ◽  
Tuo Wang ◽  
Hongyan Wang ◽  
Dawei Yu ◽  
Junya Zhang ◽  
...  

The cost-effective and stable operation of an anaerobic ceramic membrane bioreactor (AnCMBR) depends on operational strategies to minimize membrane fouling. A novel strategy for backwashing, filtration and relaxation was optimized for stable operation of a side stream tubular AnCMBR treating domestic wastewater at the ambient temperature. Two in situ backwashing schemes (once a day at 60 s/day, and twice a day at 60 s × 2/day) maintaining 55 min filtration and 5 min relaxation as a constant were compared. A flux level over 70% of the initial membrane flux was stabilized by in situ permeate backwashing irrespective of its frequency. The in situ backwashing by permeate once a day was better for energy saving, stable membrane filtration and less permeate consumption. Ex situ chemical cleaning after 60 days’ operation was carried out using pure water, sodium hypochlorite (NaOCl), and citric acid as the order. The dominant cake layer was effectively reduced by in situ backwashing, and the major organic foulants were fulvic acid-like substances and humic acid-like substances. Proteobacteria, Firmucutes, Epsilonbacteria and Bacteroides were the major microbes attached to the ceramic membrane fouling layer which were effectively removed by NaOCl.


2001 ◽  
Vol 1 (5-6) ◽  
pp. 341-348 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Takizawa ◽  
L. Fu ◽  
N. Pradhan ◽  
T. Ike ◽  
M. Ohtaki ◽  
...  

Experimental studies on chemical and biological pretreatments in membrane filtration processes were carried out to removal manganese contained in raw water and to prevent membrane fouling due to manganese. Two types of the pretreatment reactors, i.e. the fluidised-bed and fixed-bed configurations, were compared in the biological pretreatment experiments. New synthetic media (tubular polypropylene, I.D. 3 mm, O.D. 4 mm, length 5 mm) were used in all three experiments as a manganese-oxidising catalyst. The chemical pretreatment using sodium hypochlorite was effective in manganese removal and controlling membrane fouling; more than 0.8 mg-Cl2/L of chlorine dose was necessary to bring the manganese concentration from 0.4 mg/L in raw water to less than 0.05 mg/L. The biological pretreatment for manganese removal required a long start-up period of more than 40 days. The fixed-bed biological pretreatment was superior in manganese removal and in control of membrane fouling to the fluidised-bed biological pretreatment, which showed wash-out of the attached bacteria resulting in membrane fouling. The linear velocity and the empty-bed retention time required for the treatment of 0.14 mg-Mn/L in the fixed-bed biological pretreatment was 206 m/d and 8.0 minutes, respectively.


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