Combining ultrafiltration with powdered activated carbon to enhance organics removal from micro-polluted water

With the increasingly severe micro-pollution of drinking water sources, the traditional water treatment technology cannot meet current drinking water quality requirements. At the same time, there are a lot of technical difficulties in ultrafiltration membrane treatment. This research adopted powdered activated carbon (PAC) in the pilot-scale study of micro-polluted water treatment to enhance the efficiency of organic matter (OM) removal and ameliorate membrane pollution in an immersed flat ultrafiltration membrane (IFM-UF) system. The results showed that when PAC level was 80 mg/L, chemical oxygen demand and organic removal efficiency with PAC/IFM-UF process can, respectively, rise up to 64.5% and 61.8 % (increase by 27.8% and 48.5% compared with IFM-UF process solely). Dosing of AC in IFM-UF system can reduce pollution of the ultrafiltration membrane.