Capillary Nanofiltration under Anoxic Conditions as Post-Treatment after Bank Filtration

Abstract

Bank filtration schemes for the production of drinking water are increasingly affected by constituents such as sulphate and organic micropollutants (OMP) in the source water. Within the European project AquaNES, the combination of bank filtration followed by capillary nanofiltration (capNF) is being demonstrated as a potential solution for these challenges at pilot scale. As the bank filtration process reliably reduces total organic carbon and dissolved organic carbon (DOC), biopolymers, algae and particles, membrane fouling is reduced resulting in long term operational stability of capNF systems. Iron and manganese fouling could be reduced with the possibility of anoxic operation of capNF. With the newly developed membrane module HF-TNF a good retention of sulphate (67–71%), selected micropollutants (e.g., EDTA: 84–92%) and hardness (41–55%) was achieved together with further removal of DOC (82–87%). Fouling and scaling could be handled with a good cleaning concept with acid and caustic. With the combination of bank filtration and capNF a possibility for treatment of anoxic well water without further pre-treatment was demonstrated and retention of selected current water pollutants was shown.