Particle Pollutants Removal From Water With Innovative Ceramic Membrane Filtration

The study was conductedwith ceramic membrane on-site along Dongjiang river.Filtration performance was evaluated based on pollutants removal, permeated flux,particle counts, algae number and chlorophyll concentration. The removal efficiencyof heavy metal ions was also investigated preliminarily.The results showed that the removal efficiencies of turbidity by ceramic membranefiltration wasnearly100%for raw water ranged from10NTU to1000NTU, theturbidity in effluent weas below0.12NTU. The inffluent turbidity did not change theeffluent turbidity obviously. It was found that particle counter can characterize theparticle counts within the range of2^-25μm in the effluent.However, the ceramicmembrane filtration cannot remove the dissolved pollutants in terms of CODMn,UV254, NH₄⁺-N, NO₂^--N and NO₃^--N.The turbidity of raw water is able to affect the flux seriously. For turbidity rangedfrom10NTU to1000NTU, permeated flux decreased gradually. At initial permeatedflux as708L m^-2h^-1, after25minutes, it came down to305L m^-2h^-1for raw waterwith1000NTU; in contrast, it came down to685L m^-2h^-1for raw water with10NTU.The result showed that the algae can be completely removed with ceramic membranefiltration, with an efficiency of100%in terms of cellular number per liter, removalefficiency reached to96%on average in terms of Chlorophyll concentration. Thealgae number can affect the membrane flux seriously, appropriate addition ofchlorine can relieve the membrane fouling and alleviate the flux decline.Ceramic membrane filtration process could remove the Pb²⁺in raw water. Theremoval efficiency was about80%-90%. However,the ceramic membrane filtrationcannot remove Ni²⁺, Cd²⁺, and Tl+effectively. The ceramic membrane filtrationtechnology can be sued for upgrade of water plant in the future.