AWWA ACE59944

The goal of this project is to assess a competitive and innovative way of treatment for dirty surface water integrating advanced clarification and ultrafiltration (UF) membrane technologies. Approximately, 60 % share of the U.S. membrane market concerns the surface water filtration application. The use of high rate clarification as a pretreatment prior to the UF membranes could cause potential severe or irreversible fouling of membranes by the process chemicals, metal salts and flocculant aids or by natural organic matter present in surface water. Therefore this aspect is investigated in this study, which focuses mainly on the optimization of process operating issues. Specific objectives of this study, therefore, are to: optimize the UF pre-treatment (clarification step) in terms of hydraulics and natural organic matter (NOM) removal; assess the impact of coagulant dosage (residual coagulant) on the UF membrane performance; optimize membrane operation (filtration period, backwash mode and frequency, chemical cleaning procedure and frequency); and, study the membrane ageing caused by the presence of coagulant impurities (metals) and chemical cleanings. Includes 6 references, tables, figures.