Surface water treatment using microfiltration for drinking water production in Egypt

Coagulation, flocculation, sedimentation, filtration and disinfection are the widely applied systems for surface water treatment in Egypt. Due to the deterioration of surface water quality and limitation of available land, microfiltration (MF) and ultrafiltration (UF) processes became promising alternatives for conventional surface water treatment. The objective of this paper was studying the performance of full-scale PALL MF system under different raw surface water quality. In addition, the effects of raw water conditioning using alum and powdered activated carbon (PAC) on MF performance in terms of permeate flux and treated water quality was also studied. MF permeate flux decreased with the increase of natural organic matter (NOM) concentration in raw water. MF permeate flux decreased after 20 min of operation from 85 lmh to 77, 70 and 48 lmh at total organic carbon (TOC) concentration of 5, 8 and 15 mg/L, respectively. Addition of coagulant (alum) to raw water significantly improved the MF performance in terms of TOC removal and permeates flux. The TOC removal increased from 25% at zero alum dose to 50% at alum dose of 10 mg/L. The permeate flux increased from 77 lmh at zero alum dose to 95 lmh at alum dose of 10 mg/L. Use of PAC with MF significantly improved the MF performance in terms of TOC removal and permeate flux. After 20 min of the MF operation, permeate flux increased from 75 lmh at zero PAC dose to 80 lmh at 100 mg/L PAC dose. Use of MF coupled with PAC/alum for surface water treatment achieved high effluent quality and significantly improved the TOC removal.