Utility Estimation of Pre-filtration on the Membrane Water Treatment Process

막여과 정수처리공정에서 전여과공정의 효용성 평가

The application of the membrane filtration process has been increased for the drinking water treatment system because of excellent quality of treated water compared with the sand filtration process. The selection of suitable pre-treatment processes and optimum flux according to the characteristics of raw water are important factors for the design of membrane processes. In this study, the most efficient pre-treatment processes for drinking water was selected by investigating the effects of pre-treatment processes on the operational stability of the membrane filtration process. Both lab-scale and pilot-scale experiments were conducted. In the lab-scale test, the effect of pre-treatment processes on the stability of the membrane filtration process was investigated indirectly by comparing the performance of membrane flux for raw water, pre-treated water, and membrane permeated water. In the pilot-scale test, the usefulness of prefiltration processes was assessed by comparing the performance of single membrane process and hybrid coagulation-membrane process. The results indicated that the coagulation process contributed to the stabilization of trans-membrane pressure (TMP) by removing contaminants on membranes, though the pre-filtration process had little effect on the TMP.