Treatment Characteristics of Sand Filtration and Microfiltration (MF) in Advanced Water Treatment

With a belief of high water quality production and less chemical usage, membrane technology including Microfiltration (MF), Ultrafiltration (UF), and Nanofiltration(NF) is being employed more and more in drinking water treatment process. However, due to higher energy consumption of UF and NF, MF is normally used for drinking water treatment especially in a plant of large scale. In this investigation, performance ofsand filtration and membrane filtration was compared regarding removal of various water quality parameters, such as TOC, DOC, KMnO4 consumption, THMFP, and HAAFP. Two lines of pilot plant have been operated, one of which line is a traditional advanced water treatment process which includes sedimentation, sand filtration, ozonation, and activated carbon, and the other line is an alternative treatment process which includes sedimentation with inclined plate, MF membrane, ozonation, and activated carbon. For the first about 4months of period, MF filtration showed similar or little bit higher performance than sand filtration. However, after about 4month later, sand filtration showed much higher performance in removing all parameters monitored in the investigation. It was found that sand filtration is a better option than MF filtration as far as microbial community is fully activated in sand filter bed.