River Water Purification via a Coagulation-Porous Ceramic Membrane Hybrid Process

Membrane filtration technology combined with coagulation is widely used to purify river water.In this study,microfiltration(MF)and ultrafiltration(UF)ceramic membranes were combined with coagulation to treat local river water located at Xinghua,Jiangsu province,China.The operation parameters,fouling mechanism and pilot-scale tests were investigated.The results show that the pore size of membrane has small effect on the pseudo-steady flux for dead-end filtration,and the increase of flux in MF process is more than that in UF process for cross-flow filtration with the same increase of cross-flow velocity.The membrane pore size has little influence on the water quality.The analysis on membrane fouling mechanism shows that the cake filtration has significant influence on the pseudo-steady flux and water quality for the membrane with pore size of 50,200 and 500 nm.For the membrane with pore size of 200 nm and backwashing employed in our pilot study,a constant flux of 150L·m 2·h 1was reached during stable operation,with the removal efficiency of turbidity,total organic carbon(TOC)and UV254 higher than 99%,45%and 48%,respectively.The study demonstrates that coagulation-porous ceramic membrane hybrid process is a reliable method for river water purification.

Comparison of the effects of aluminum and iron(Ⅲ)salts on ultrafiltration membrane biofouling in drinking water treatment

Coagulation plays an important role in alleviating membrane fouling, and a noticeable problem is the development of microorganisms after long-time operation, which gradually secrete extracellular polymeric substances（EPS）. To date, few studies have paid attention to the behavior of microorganisms in drinking water treatment with ultrafiltration（UF）membranes. Herein, the membrane biofouling was investigated with different aluminum and iron salts. We found that Al_2（SO_4）_3·18 H_2O performed better in reducing membrane fouling due to the slower growth rate of microorganisms. In comparison to Al_2（SO_4）_3·18H_2O,more EPS were induced with Fe_2（SO_4）_3·x18H_2O, both in the membrane tank and the sludge on the cake layer. We also found that bacteria were the major microorganisms, of which the concentration was much higher than those of fungi and archaea. Further analyses showed that Proteobacteria was dominant in bacterial communities, which caused severe membrane fouling by forming a biofilm, especially for Fe_2（SO_4）_3·x18H_2O. Additionally, the abundances of Bacteroidetes and Verrucomicrobia were relatively higher in the presence of Al_2（SO_4）_3·18 H_2O,resulting in less severe biofouling by effectively degrading the protein and polysaccharide in EPS. As a result, in terms of microorganism behaviors, Al-based salts should be given preference as coagulants during actual operations.