초록
Membrane filtration process is an advanced water treatment technology that has excellently removes turbidity and microorganisms. However, it is known that it has problems such as low economic efficiency and the operating stability. Therefore, this study was to evaluate on the economical feasibility and operational stability comparison of membrane and sand filtration process in Im-sil drinking water treatment plant. For the economic analysis of each process, the electricity cost and chemical consumption were compared. In the case of electric power consumption, electricity cost is $68.67KRW/m^3$ for sand filtration and $79.98KRW/m^3$ for membrane filtration, respectively. Therefore, membrane filtration process was about 16% higher than sand filtration process of electricity cost. While, the coagulant usage in the membrane filtration process was 43% lower than the sand filtration process. Thus, comparing the operation costs of the two processes, there is no significant difference in the operating cost of the membrane filtration process and the sand filtration process as $85.94KRW/m^3$ and $79.71KRW/m^3$ respectively (the sum of electricity and chemical cost). As a result of operating the membrane filtration process for 3 years including the winter season and the high turbidity period, the filtrated water turbidity was stable to less than 0.025 NTU irrespective of changes in the turbidity of raw water. And the CIP(Clean In Place) cycle turned out to be more than 1 year. Based on the results of this study, the membrane filtration process showed high performance of water quality, and it was also determined to have the economics and operation stability.