Performance of Micelle-Clay Filters for Removing Pollutants and Bacteria from Tertiary Treated Wastewater

Filters filled with a micelle-clay complex mixed with sand were employed to investigate their purification capability of tertiary treated wastewater with loose UF-membranes. The UF membrane was hollow fiber with a molecular weight cutoff of 100kD. The complex was prepared from the organic cation octadecyltrimethylammonium (ODTMA) and the negatively charged clay-mineral, montmorillonite. This complex has a very large surface area, which includes large hydrophobic domains and is positively charged, about half of the cation exchange capacity of the clay. Two sets of filtration experiments were carried out at flow rates of 1.2 and 50 mL/min, which correspond to flow velocities of 3.7 and 153 cm/h, respectively. In the first case, after a passage of 1 L, the turbidity, total suspended solids (TSS), fecal coliforms (FC), and total coliforms (TC) were reduced to zero from 14 NTU, 6ppm, 350 and 10,000 counts per 100mL, respectively. In the second case, the numbers of FC and TC were reduced from 50,000/100mL to zero after the passage of 14 L. The values of COD and BOD were reduced several-fold. The conclusion is that the incorporation of micelle-clay filters in the sewage treatment system with loose tertiary capability is promising and warrants larger scale experiments for optimization of the overall system.