APPROPRIATE TECHNOLOGIES TO COMBAT WATER POLLUTION
Combined effects of coagulation and adsorption on ultrafiltration
membrane fouling control and subsequent disinfection in drinking
water treatment
Jiajian Xing
1
&
Heng Liang
1
&
Xiaoxiang Cheng
2
&
Haiyan Yang
3
&
Daliang Xu
1
&
Zhendong Gan
1
&
Xinsheng Luo
1
&
Xuewu Zhu
1
&
Guibai Li
1
Received: 23 March 2018 /Accepted: 24 May 2018
#
Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2018
Abstract
This study investigated the combined effects of coagulation and powdered activated carbon (PAC) adsorption on ultrafiltration (UF)
membrane fouling control and subsequent disinfection efficiency through filtration performance, dissolved organic carbon (DOC)
removal, fluorescence excitation-emission matrix (EEM) spectroscopy, and disinfectant curve. The fouling behavior of UF mem-
brane was comprehensively analyzed especially in terms of pollutant removal and fouling reversibility to understand the mecha-
nism of fouling accumulation and disinfectant dose reduction. Pre-coagulation with or without adsorption both achieved remarkable
effect of fouling mitigation and disinfection dose reduction. The two pretreatments were effective in total fouling control and pre-
coagulation combined with PAC adsorption even decreased hydraulically irreversible fouling notably. Besides, pre-coagulation
decreased residual disinfectant decline due to the removal of hydrophobic components of natural organic matters (NOM). Pre-
coagulation combined with adsorption had a synergistic effect on further disinfectant decline rate reduction and decreased total
disinfectant consumption due to additional removal of hydrophilic NOM by PAC adsorption. The disinfectant demand was further
reduced after membrane. These results show that membrane fouling and disinfectant dose can be reduced in UF coupled with
pretreatment, which could lead to the avoidance of excessive operation cost disinfectant dose for drinking water supply.
Keywords Pretreatment
.
Ultrafiltration membrane fouling
.
Disinfection
.
Natural organic matter
Introduction
Ultrafiltration (UF) is a promising and attractive alternative for
the treatment of surface water due to its effective removal of
microorganism, colloids, and natural organic matter (NOM)
(Snyder et al. 2007). However, membrane fouling has been a
critical obstacle for the widespread application (Bolton et al.
2006). Many procedures have been promoted to improve the
efficiency of filtration process and water quality. Pretreatment
conducted on feed water has attracted researchers’ attention in
recent years (Xing et al. 2018). Among the pretreatments,
coagulation, adsorption, filtration, and oxidation are widely
applied. Most of these methods have been reported effective
in membrane fouling control; some defects such as metal ions
and extra disinfection by-products were still observed in op-
eration (Bhatnagar and Sillanpää 2017).
Recently, some hybrid membrane systems combined with
several pretreatment processes have been extensively
employed to mitigate membrane fouling and improve effluent
quality (Choi et al. 2010). Coagulation and sedimentation,
which was a common process applied in drinking water treat-
ment, has now been a widely employed unit prior to UF mem-
brane to alleviate membrane fouling (Sun et al. 2015, Wang et
al. 2014). Pretreatment of coagulation/flocculation is also an
effective alternative for improving membrane performance
Responsible editor: Bingcai Pan
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article
(https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-018-2416-1) contains supplementary
material, which is available to authorized users.
* Heng Liang
hitliangheng@163.com
1
State Key Laboratory of Urban Water Resource and Environment
(SKLUWRE), Harbin Institute of Technology, 73 Huanghe Road,
Nangang District, Harbin 150090, People’sRepublicofChina
2
School of Municipal and Environmental Engineering, Shandong
Jianzhu University, 1000 Fengming Road, Licheng District,
Jinan 250101, People’s Republic of China
3
Department of Geoscience, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee,
3209 N Maryland Ave, Milwaukee, WI 53211, USA
Environmental Science and Pollution Research
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-018-2416-1
@Phil_Robichaud
@deepthiw
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