Study of drinking water treatment by ultrafiltration of surfacewater and its application to China

In China, many water supplies depend on conventional water treatment. Due to unfit soil and water conservationin some regions of China, conventional water treatment has showed some defects for the poor quality of water resource. In addition, advances in membrane technology and increasing requirements on water quality have stimulated ultrafiltration (UF) for water treatment. In this research, OF test apparatus was set up to produce drinking water from raw water of the Binxian Reservoir (China). The performance of OF membranes was investigated. There was a linear relationship between membrane resistance and accumulated permeate water. Using coagulation before OF increased permeate flux and retarded membrane flux decline. Surprisingly, membrane permeate flux in a coagulation/UF process was higher than that in coagulation-sand filtration-UF process with raw water of medium turbidity. OF treatment provided effective turbidity removal. Iron, manganese and aluminum were removed completely. The OF membrane also perfectly removed all coliform bacteria. The reduction of total organic carbon was satisfactory. The treated water quality complied with China's drinking water guidelines. The Ames test showed that the mutagenic activities of membrane permeate water was negative.