Organic matter removal and membrane fouling mitigation during algae-rich surface water treatment by powdered activated carbon adsorption pretreatment: Enhanced by UV and UV/chlorine oxidation

Abstract

In this work, UV and UV/chlorine (UV/Cl) were employed to enhance powdered activated carbon (PAC) adsorption pretreatment prior to ultrafiltration process for algae-contaminated surface water treatment. Their performance on membrane fouling mitigation and organic pollutant rejection was systematically evaluated. A comparative experiment was conducted under varying pollution degrees of algal extracellular organic matter (EOM) contamination in surface river water. The results indicated that UV/PAC and UV/Cl/PAC pretreatment effectively enhanced the removal of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) and UV-absorbing at 254 nm (UV254). The characteristics of feed water after pretreatments were investigated through apparent molecular-weight (MW) distribution and fluorescence parallel factor analysis (PARAFAC). In regard to membrane fouling mitigation, UV/Cl/PAC noticeably decreased reversible and irreversible fouling resistance simultaneously and UV/PAC preferred reducing reversible membrane fouling. Combined fouling modeling was operated to scrutinize the fouling mitigation mechanisms and standard pore blocking was proved to be dominant during the filtration process. Moreover, the UV/Cl and UV/Cl/PAC pretreatments were proved positive for emerging micropollutants degradation and disinfection by-products formation potential reduction. The results suggested that UV and UV/Cl are likely strategies to enhance the efficiency of PAC adsorption pretreatments prior to ultrafiltration during algae-contaminated water treatment.