Pre-treatment of Llobregat River raw water through pressurised inside/out hollow fibre ultrafiltration membranes

ABSTRACT

The feasibility of raw river direct ultrafiltration, as an alternative to conventional drinking water treatment plant pre-treatment, was investigated at prototype scale (May–October 2011). A highly variable and challenging water resource was selected, in order to assess different scenarios, covering a broad range of conditions. The prototype was able to deal with conditions ranging from 20 to >800 NTU successfully, without any chemical pre-treatment and consuming low amount of chemical reagents for cleaning purposes. The membranes’ performance proved to work better in terms of water production yield and resistance build up stability at medium and high turbidity episodes than at lower ones, probably due to a cake layer formation which prevented small binding organic species and particles reaching the membrane. Permeate quality, both in physico-chemical and microbiological terms, was independent of the feed water characteristics.

Keywords:

• Direct ultrafiltration
• Membrane fouling
• Low and variable quality surface water
• Drinking water treatment

Acknowledgements

This work has been conducted under the financial support of the LIFE+Programme of the European Commission within the framework of the UFTEC Project (LIFE09 ENV/ES/000467 UFTEC). The authors gratefully acknowledge Carmen Galvañ (CETaqua) and Bastiaan Blankert (Pentair X-Flow) for their technical contribution in this work.

Notes

Presented at the International Conference on Desalination for the Environment, Clean Water and Energy, European Desalination Society, April 23–26, 2012, Barcelona, Spain