An evaluation of the adsorption process in removing organic substances in a pilot flow-type surface water treatment system

Małgorzata Wolska,Wojciech Adamski,Zbigniew Ferenc,Jacek Wiśniewski,Sławomir Szerzyna,Małgorzata Żółtowska,Marek Mołczan,Aleksandra Sambor,I Zimoch

doi:10.1051/e3sconf/20185900018

Abstract

This article presents the results of the adsorption process effectiveness in treating surface water, especially in removing organic substances. The effectiveness of the adsorption system was evaluated at different levels of adsorption capacity exhaustion of the activated carbon bed, which was possible due to replacement of the beds during the study period. Studies have shown that among the removed substances, chlorinated disinfection byproduct precursors dominated, and during the period preceding bed replacement, the biological activity of microorganism populating the activated carbon ensured a reduction in not only organic but also non-organic food substrates. In such a adsorption bed populated with microorganism a nitrification process took place, indicating a high degree of process stability. Replacing the adsorption beds provided a significant increase in the effectiveness of removing organic substances, especially those absorbing UV light, therefore removing chlorinated organic disinfection by-product precursors.

Highlights

The increase in contamination of source surface waters due to their contamination with household and industrial wastewater and atmospheric precipitation has caused that water treatment systems more often make use of adsorption processes [1,2]
This process ensures the removal of organic substances of medium and low molecular mass [3,4,5,6,7], whose elimination is not possible during the coagulation process, which is commonly used for removing organic substances from surface waters before the adsorption process
Studies of adsorption process effectiveness in the surface water treatment system were conducted in a pilot-scale flow-type system with a throughput of 3 m3/h consisting of coagulation, sedimentation, filtration, adsorption, disinfection and pH correction

Summary

Introduction

The increase in contamination of source surface waters due to their contamination with household and industrial wastewater and atmospheric precipitation has caused that water treatment systems more often make use of adsorption processes [1,2]. The adsorption process effectively removes some pharmaceuticals [10], pesticides [11], phenols [12] and non-organic microcontaminants such as heavy metals [13]. This is one of the reasons of the increasing use of activated carbon in surface water treatment technology

Methods

Results

Conclusion