Ceramic ultrafiltration membranes (CUF) have better anti-pollution ability and longer service life than traditional organic membranes, so they are more and more widely used in drinking water treatment systems. However, membrane fouling is still the main obstacle to hinder the expansion of their applications. In this study, powdered activated carbon (PAC) adsorption, KMnO4 pre-oxidation and the combined KMnO4-PAC process were adopted to improve the filtration performance of CUF. During the experiment, the membrane fouling control effect and organics removal of three model pollutants of humic acid (HA), bovine serum albumin (BSA) and sodium alginate (SA) were examined systematically. The results showed that the KMnO4-PAC-CUF process had the highest organics removal performance, with the DOC removal ratios of HA, BSA and SA being 50.9%, 61.0% and 94.2%, respectively; and the KMnO4-CUF process exhibited slightly lower organic removal ratios of HA, BSA and SA, respectively, for the three organic substances; while direct CUF presented the lowest organics removal performance. Comparing with BSA, SA induced the highest membrane fouling indexes, i.e., over 16 m-1 for all the four technologies adopted in present study, while HA the lowest (i.e., all below 1 m-1). Overall, the current study indicated that KMnO4-PAC-CUF process could be effectively applied in drinking water treatment, which can be further explored in future.

Enhancing ceramic ultrafiltration membrane performance with PAC adsorption and KMnO4 pre-oxidation

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