Optimization of O3 as Pre-Treatment and Chemical Enhanced Backwashing in UF and MF Ceramic Membranes for the Treatment of Secondary Wastewater Effluent and Red Sea Water

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Abstract

Ceramic membranes have proven to have many advantages over polymeric membranes. Some of these advantages are: resistance against extreme pH, higher permeate flux, less frequent chemical cleaning, excellent backwash efficiency and longer lifetime. Other main advantage is the use of strong chemical agent such as Ozone (O3), to perform membrane cleaning. Ozone has proven to be a good disinfection agent, deactivating bacteria and viruses. Ozone has high oxidation potential and high reactivity with natural organic matter (NOM). Several studies have shown that combining ozone to MF/UF systems could minimize membrane fouling and getting higher operational fluxes. This work focused on ozone – ceramic membrane filtration for treating wastewater effluent and seawater. Effects of ozone as a pre – treatment or chemical cleaning with ceramic membrane filtration were identified in terms of permeate flux and organic fouling. Ozonation tests were done by adjusting O3 dose with source water, monitoring flux decline and membrane fouling. Backwashing availability and membrane recovery rate were also analyzed. Two types of MF/UF ceramics membranes (AAO and TAMI) were used for this study. When ozone dosage was higher in the source water, membrane filtration improved in performance, resulting in a reduced flux decline. In secondary wastewater effluent, raw source water declined up to 77% of normalized flux, while with O3 as pre – treatment, source water at its higher O3 dose, flux decreased only 33% of normalized flux. For seawater, membrane performance increase from declining to 37% of its final normalized flux to 21%, when O3 as a pre – treatment was used. Membrane recovery rate also improved even with low O3 dose, as an example, with 8 mg/L irreversible fouling decreases from 58% with no ozone addition to 29% for secondary wastewater effluent treatment. For seawater treatment, irreversible fouling decreased from 37% with no ozone addition to 21% at 8 mg/L, proving ozone is a useful chemical to be used as pre – treatment for both source waters. Finally, transparent exopolymer particles (TEP) showed a decrease in concentration on the active layer of the membrane surface after chemical enhanced backwashing (CEB) using ozone (O3).

Citation

Herrera, C. (2011). Optimization of O3 as Pre-Treatment and Chemical Enhanced Backwashing in UF and MF Ceramic Membranes for the Treatment of Secondary Wastewater Effluent and Red Sea Water. KAUST Research Repository. https://doi.org/10.25781/KAUST-K0KZ9