Evaluation of the different integrated pre-treatment processes for the ceramic based microfiltration

Abstract In the present study, in order to enhance the performance of ceramic microfiltration (MF) water treatment process, several pre-treatment processes such as adsorption, coagulation, flocculation, and sedimentation were examined under harsh conditions (kaolin of 50 mg/L with a humic acid of 1000 mg/L). A jar-test of batch coagulation/flocculation (C/F) experiments showed that the optimum coagulant (A-PAC, 10.6 % as Al2O3) dosage was 5 mg/L. Moreover, batch adsorption experiments revealed that the powdered activated carbon dosage of 20 mg/L with stirring for 30 min was the optimum condition. When the ceramic MF process was operated at the flux of 5 m3/m2/d, the implication of integrated coagulation/flocculation/adsorption (C/F/A-Mem) could lead to a better improvement of the removal ratio (DOC, UV254, and turbidity) compared with other integrated procedures. In terms of the filtration resistances, the integrated pre-treatment and ceramic MF processes are mitigating fouling problems compared with the single ceramic MF process, which means that the single ceramic MF process was not effective to operate with a stable TMP and produce suitable water qualities of the permeate water. Based on the results, the integrated C/F/A followed by the ceramic MF process was the best approach to produce better qualities water with long-term stability.