Investigation of the fouling behaviors correlating to water characteristics during the ultrafiltration with ozone treatment

Abstract This study investigated the fouling behavior and mechanism of ozone treatment correlating to water characteristics for micro-polluted water during ultrafiltration (UF). The results indicated that pre-ozonation efficiently mitigated membrane fouling of natural organic matter (NOM). The higher ozone doses were, the more the performance transmembrane pressures (TMPs) decreased. Ozone mainly converted macro molecule organics into low molecule organics. Macro molecular biopolymers (BP) can be removed up to 35.5% with an ozone treatment of 9 mg/L, while low molecular weight building blocks of acids and humics (BB) and neutrals (LMWN) increased 7.25% and 14.62%, respectively, with an ozone treatment of 9 mg/L. Analysis of fluorescence excitation emission matrices (EEMs) coupled with parallel factor analysis (PARAFAC) indicated that ozone mainly removed soluble microbial organics and fulvic-like and humic-like organics but not tyrosine organics. Hydrophobic organics (HPO) were reduced with an increase of ozone doses, especially macro molecular BP and humic substances (HS), and the neutral hydrophilic fraction (N-HPI) was enhanced. Ozone treatment helped to reduce the interception of BP and HS in HPO and improved the interception of BP and HS in N-HPI, as well as BB and LMWN, in both fractions. Principal component analysis suggested that BP, as well as UV 254 , had high correlations with a membrane fouling index, which can be used as the fouling indicator during ozone treatment.