Remediation Groundwater contaminated with Nitrate and Phosphate using Micellar-enhanced ultrafiltration

The drinking water industry faces a growing number of difficultiesin the treatment of groundwater for drinking water production. Groundwater sources are frequently contaminated with nitrates and phosphates due to usage of chemical fertilizer In this study, feasibility of micellar enhanced ultrafiltation (MEUF) was investigated to remediate groundwater contaminated with nitrate and phosphate. Ultrafiltration membrane was cellulose acetate with molecular weight cut off (MWCO) 10,000 and celtyl pyridinium chloride (CPC) was used to form pollutant-micelle complex with nitrate and phosphate. The results show that nitrate and phosphate rejections are satisfactory. The removal efficiency of nitrate and phosphate show 80% and 84% in single pollutant system, respectively with 3 molar ratio of CPC to pollutants. In the multi-pollutant systems, the removalefficiency increased to 90 % and 89 % for nitrate and phosphate, respectively, The presence of nitrate in the solutions did not affect the removal of phosphate and that of phosphate did not affect the removal of nitrate. The concentration of CPC in the permeate and removal efficiency of CPC was a function of the concentration of CPC in the feed solutions.