Hyun, Seunghoon;Kim, Eung Do;Hong, Seungkwan;Ahn, Wonyoung;Yim, Seongkeun;Kim, Geontae
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This study was conducted to evaluate the performance of submerged hollow fiber MF processes to treat secondary wastewater for water reuse. Specifically, membrane productivity and filtrate water quality were investigated under various operating conditions (i.e. flux, recovery, and backwash rate) at pilot-scale. Membrane fouling became more severe with increasing flux and recovery, suggesting that low flux operation (< 25 LMH) was desirable. At high flux operating(> 37.5 LMH), increasing backwash rate showed only limited success. The biofouling, quantified by PEPA and BFHPC, was also significant in wastewater reclamation, and biogrowth control by chlorine, were necessary to improve membrane productivity. Filtrate water qualities are in good compliance with water reuse regulations regardless of operating conditions (flux, recovery and backwash rate). Particle (e.g. turbidity) removal ranged from 89 to 98%, while only 11 to 21% of organics (e.g. NPDOC) were removed by MF membrane. Only small improvement in biostability (e.g. AOC) was achieved by MF system, and thus, without post disinfection, significant microorganisms might be present in the filtrate due to regrowth. Lastly, in order to further investigate pathogen removal, controlled microbial challenge tests were performed by monitoring Giardia, Cryptosporidium, bacteria and virus, and showed relatively good microbial removal.