Ultrafiltration as an alternative membrane technology to obtain safe drinking water from surface water: 10 years of experience on the scope of the AQUAPOT project (original) (raw)
Related papers
Desalination, 2004
One of the most critical problems in developing countries is the lack of drinking water. People in these regions are supplied with surface water, which contains a significant amount of microorganisms that can cause several diseases. In fact, one of the main causes of infantile mortality is the high incidence of diarrhoeic diseases and other illnesses related to impure drinking water. Ultrafiltration (UF) is a pressure-driven membrane process that separates on the basis of size and can remove bacteria and viruses from water. Therefore, UF can be applied for disinfecting water, avoiding some illnesses or epidemics where people consume ultrafiltrated water. The Chemical and Nuclear Engineering Department of the Polytechnic University of Valencia in Spain is working in cooperation with a non-governmental organisation to develop a system to make water drinkable in a region of Ecuador. The system consists of an UF plant with one spiral-wound module, equipped with a pressure pump driven by a petrol engine. Before the application of the process, the UF plant has to be completely tested and fine-tuned in order to assure that it will successfully perform once in Ecuador. One of the stages of these preliminary tests was the selection of the most suitable UF membrane from the point of view of kind of material and cutoff , bearing in mind the following points: quality of ultrafiltrated water, performance conditions, membrane fouling and cleaning and maintenance conditions. This paper describes the preliminary tests carried out with different UF membranes to select the most suitable one for disinfecting surface water.
Drinking Water Treatment by Ultrafiltration Membrane: A Review
2018
With the improvement of living standards, people on drinking water quality is also put forward higher requirements, so the standard of drinking water is becoming more and more strict. Compared with conventional water treatment technology, membrane separation technology has good water quality, stable operation, small occupation area, easy to realize the automatic control, has an extremely wide application prospect in municipal water treatment industry. This method briefly introduces the domestic types and development situation of materials of preparing ultra-filtration membrane. Membrane filtration in drinking water treatment has become a more attractive technology in recent years as a possible alternative treatment.
Desalination, 2002
In many areas of underdeveloped countries population is supplied with water from rivers, lakes, etc., without applying any water treatment in most cases this water contains a certain amount of virus, bacteria and other microorganisms, which can cause several diseases. The research group of the Chemical and Nuclear Engineering Department of the Polytechnic University of Valencia (Spain) is working in the project: Design and Construction of a Water Potabilization Membrane Facility and its Application to the Third World Countries (AQUAPOT) in collaboration with the non-governmental organization Association for the Cooperation with Ecuador (ACOEC). In this project, membrane technology is proposed as an option to the current system of treatment. The object of the AQUAPOT project is the design and construction of an ultrafiltration membrane treatment unit, with spiral configuration, applicable to urban supplying systems in underdeveloped countries, which cannot guarantee an accurate disinfection of water. Before being placed definitively in Ecuador, the ultrafiltration facility has to be tested in order to prove its right operation. For so, an ultrafiltration unit similar to the one that is being constructed for being applied in Ecuador has been tested with water in much worse microbiological conditions than the water of Ecuador. The aim of this work is to describe these preliminary tests and analyze the ultrafiltration facility performance.
Ultra-low pressure ultrafiltration for decentralized drinking water treatment
2010
Decentralized drinking-water systems are an important element in the process of reaching the Millennium Development Goals, as centralized systems are often deficient or non-existent in developing and transition countries (DC and TC). Most water-quality problems are due to hygiene factors and pathogens. A range of decentralized systems is available to counter these problems, including thermal and/or UV methods, physical removal and chemical treatment. This review focuses on decentralized systems that treat the potable water (drinking and cooking) of a single household (point-of-use systems) or a community (small scale systems). For application in DC and TC, important boundary conditions for decentralized systems include low costs, ease of use, sustainability, low maintenance and independence of utilities (energy sources). Although some low-cost systems are available, their application is limited by time-consuming daily operation and maintenance. Other systems are too expensive for th...
Journal of Water Process Engineering, 2020
The primary intention of this review is to showcase and quantify the level of research interest and current research trends, concerning UF membrane applications and processes within the past decade (2009-2018). Detected statistics manifested a resurgent interest in the UF technology on a yearly basis. "Journal of Membrane Science" and "Desalination and Water Treatment" were the primary journals dominating the size of the annual publication among more than 120 ones, with 854 and 683 papers, respectively. Based on ScienceDirect research platform, fouling (27%), modelling (17%) and wastewater (12%), were the dominating research topics and counting for more than half of total scientific articles published (4547 articles) within the specified period of the research. Unsurprisingly, topics like UF membrane fabrication and modification, food processing, hybrid membrane process have disclosed a distinguished growing up trends in terms of annual publications. The current review unrevealed the present-day significance of the UF membranes along with their prospective opportunities for attaining sustainable water industries and materializing the efforts of future researchers into the right orientation. Highlights: • Fouling, modelling and wastewater are dominating research areas of UF membrane which counted for 27%, 17%, and 12% of the total publication's size, respectively. • Journal of Membrane Science was the primary journal dominating the size of the annual publication about UF. • Fouling of the UF membrane is the largest single area of research interest. • Potential research trends in UF membrane applications are critically reviewed • Topics of Optimization and Hybrid UF membrane processes are getting a consistent research interest.
Water Supply, 2011
Fouling remains one of the major constraints on the use of low pressure membranes in drinking water treatment. Work over the last few years has shown the importance of biopolymers (carbohydrates and protein-like material) as foulants for ultrafiltration (UF) membranes. The purpose of this study was to investigate at pilot scale the use of rapid biofiltration (without prior coagulation or ozone addition) as an innovative pretreatment to reduce fouling of UF membranes. The investigation was carried out on a water with a higher than average DOC and significant temperature variation. The biofilters, each operated at a hydraulic loading of 5 m/h, had empty bed contact times of 5, 10 and 15 minutes. The membrane unit was operated at a flux equivalent to 60 LMH at 20°C. The investigation confirmed the encouraging results obtained in an earlier smaller scale study with essentially the same water. Increased biofiltration contact time (i.e. increased bed depth) led to lower rates of hydraulic...
Direct drinking water treatment by spiral-wound ultrafiltration membranes
Desalination, 2008
This paper presents the results of a research on direct drinking water treatment through an ultrafiltration pilot plant unit using spiral-wound membranes (3500 MWCO). The source of water is the Guarapiranga Reservoir, an eutrophicated water body located in the metropolitan region of São Paulo, Brazil. The data were collected during a period of almost 3400 h, from August 2005 to January 2006. The main objective of the study was to evaluate the membrane production capacity and contaminant removal efficiency. It was verified that the system was able to produce a high quality permeate with a flow close to the specified by the membrane manufacturer. The average permeate flow was 19.7 L.h !1 .m !2 , at 467 kPa and 25°C, with a global water recovery of almost 85%. The removal efficiencies for TOC, UV light absorption, and turbidity were 85%, 56%, and 95%, respectively. The results provide substantial evidence of the technical feasibility of spiral-wound UF membranes for direct drinking water treatment from euthrophicated sources, as an alternative for conventional drinking water treatment systems.
Membranes
Fresh water shortages affect larger areas each year due to the increased human population combined with climate change. Reuse of treated sewage water (mostly for nonpotable uses) can have a significant impact on reducing water scarcity. Ultrafiltration membranes are widely considered as a very good candidate for the remediation of this type of water. The case of Patras’ sewage treatment plant was examined for the treatment of its secondary settling tank effluent using a pilot ultrafiltration unit to produce permeate water suitable for reuse according to Greek legislation. The physicochemical characteristics of the membrane permeate stream showed significant improvements in the quality of the produced water. Turbidity was reduced by 99%, total suspended solids were decreased by more than 94%, while COD was reduced by 37%. E. coli and Enterococcus were detected at high concentrations in the feed stream but were eliminated in the membrane permeate. The results presented herein indicate...
Performance of an ultrafiltration membrane bioreactor (UF-MBR) in wastewater treatment
DESALINATION AND WATER TREATMENT, 2019
This work presents the performance of an ultrafiltration membrane bioreactor (UF-MBR) system used as a means of removing pollution from domestic wastewater. Considering the technical performances of the process under different operational conditions, influence of hydraulic retention time (HRT), aeration rate and transmembrane pressure were observed. The evaluation of permeate quality, calculated by the removal efficiencies for various water quality indicators: chemical oxygen demand, biological oxygen demand, total suspended solids, total nitrogen (TN) and total phosphorous (TP). The best results obtained on the system (pressure p = 1.27 bar), HRT (15 h) showed removal efficiencies up to 90% in terms of organic compounds removal, 100% in terms of suspended solids presence and up to 80% reduction of TN and TP. The overall results suggest that the performance of the UF-MBR are likely to impact on the operation and maintenance of the system. However, the MBR process might be successfully applied as a treatment for the removal of pollution from domestic wastewater.