• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
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• v.36 no.7
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• pp.492-497
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• 2014

This study investigated removal characteristics of organic matters in pretreatment and reverse osmosis (RO) membrane processes for seawater desalination. Also, the influence of the changes in characteristics of organic matters on the membrane fouling was assessed. The pretreatment processes included dual media filtration (DMF), pressurized membrane filtration (MF), and submerged membrane filtration (SMF). Turbidity, UV absorption at 254 nm, dissolved organic carbon, size exclusion chromatography (SEC), fluorescence excitation emission matrix (FEEM), and transparent exopolymer particles (TEP) in raw and processed waters were analyzed. Ions and minerals were not removed by any pretreatment process tested, but were removed over 99% through the RO membrane process. Hydrophobic organics, which can play major role in organic membrane fouling, were relatively readily removed compared with hydrophilic ones. Membrane based pretreatment such as MF and SMF exhibited better removals of organics than conventional DMF. As the levels of organics in pretreated water decreased, the silt density index (SDI) decreased. MF treated water exhibited the lowest SDI value; this is possibly due to the lowest TEP ($0.1-0.4{\mu}m$) concentrations.

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.22 no.5
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• pp.517-522
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• 2008

This study aims at an assessment of the effectiveness of taste & odor removal and transmembrane pressure changes in a pilot membrane plant(500m3/day) by adding PAC to MF process, and at providing a basis for applying it to the advanced water treatment process. The transmembrane pressure showed, in low turbidity of raw water, a tendency to decrease when PAC was injected at the Flux of 1, $1.5m^3/m^2{\cdot}d$, while it increased in high Flux($1.5m^3/m^2{\cdot}d$) in high turbidity of raw water. in addtion, it is shown that the fouling could be reduced more when PAC is injected together with appropriate amount of coagulant, than when PAC is solely injected. Taste & Odor-causing 2-MIB may not be detected in membrane filtered water, if the amount of PAC injection is increased in accordance with the increasing concentration of 2-MIB. Hence, PAC injection, as a pre-treatment process in MF membrane filtering, is supposed to be a suitable process for reducing fouling as well as for improvement effectiveness of taste & odor treatment.

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.429-436
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• 2005

A coagulation/ultrafiltration membrane hybrid system was operated to treat river water with capacity of $0.06m^3/d$. The impact on membrane fouling by flux and linear velocity was investigated. It is known that pressure increase is proportional to flux increase. However, pressure increase was much faster than theoretical value in the pilot plant test. So it was suggested that flux was on important factor in ultrafiltration of continuous operation. Membrane fouling was decreased when linear velocity was increased. This phenomenon was found more obviously without coagulation. With the combination of coagulation and sedimentation, membrane fouling was not reduced conspicuously. Big particles formed during coagulation and sedimentation were destroyed by feed and circulation pumping, which resulted in little effect on membrane fouling reduction. The degree of destruction was similar at various linear velocities. In this study, the hollow fiber membrane was used and the system was operated in pressure type module. In case of the system used in this study, membrane fouling has been affected lightly by linear velocity variation when coagulation pretreatment was applied.

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.437-444
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• 2008

Many other countries have investigated the new backwash water treatment process to save the existing water resource. There are various methods for reusing backwash water, but the membrane system has received the most interest for its efficiency. The objective of this study was to certify the application of membrane filtration system for the backwash water treatment. The experiment equipment was composed of Lab scale tubular membrane filtration system. Generally, cross-flow operation mode is used in the tubular membrane system but cross-flow operation mode demands high electric cost mainly for the pump energy. So to cut off electric cost, dead-end operation mode was used in this experiment. Filtration and bleed operation cycle was used in this membrane system. Backwash water was concentrated during the filtration process and when backwash water reached our target suspended solid concentration, it was discharged from this system. For efficient operation of filtration and bleed, mathematical matrix was drawn up and with this matrix we could simulate various sets of filtration and bleed time.

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.25 no.6
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• pp.981-987
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• 2011

Biologically treated water contains a large quantity of organic matters and microorganisms which can cause various problems to membrane. The membrane fouling occurred by these reasons is hard to control by single physical cleaning. This study analyzes the efficiency of aeration with chemical backwashing and foulants removal during chemical backwashing. The cleaning efficiency improves when the chemical concentration is high and the contact time of chemical is long. Chemical backwashing with aeration shows exceptional cleaning efficiency which leads the physical cleaning is required during chemical backwashing since it forms flow inside the membrane submerged tank. From the foulants removal analysis, the particles such as turbidity and TOC removal rate increase when the aeration is applied. Dissolved matter of DOC and UV254 removal is dependent on higher chemical concentration. According to FTIR analysis, one of major foulants, the polysaccharide is controlled by the chemical backwashing with aeration condition.

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.169-175
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• 2017

This study applied microbubbles to reduce membrane fouling in wastewater reuse membrane processes, evaluated and compared the transmembrane pressure with or without the application of microbubbles and the cleaning efficiency with the application of aeration and microbubbles. In addition, this study analyzed foulants removed from the membrane surface. Changes in the transmembrane pressure of membranes with the presence or absence of microbubbles were observed. As a result, transmembrane pressure (TMP) increasing rate decreased twofold when applying microbubbles to realize stable operations. This study compared and evaluated cleaning efficiency applying aeration and microbubbles. As a result, the cleaning efficiency was 5% higher on average when applying microbubbles. In turbidity and total organic carbon (TOC), foulants were discharged when applying microbubbles twice as much as applying aeration. It is thought that particulate foulants precipitated on the membrane surface were more likely to desorb because the adhesion between the membrane surface and particle was weakened by microbubbles. Therefore, it is considered possible to effectively control membrane fouling because of the increase in cleaning efficiency when applying microbubbles to wastewater reuse membrane processes.

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.30 no.3
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• pp.335-341
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• 2016

Various studies have forwarded an outstanding wastewater effluent treatment systems toward securing sustainable supply of water sources. In this paper, a broad overview of the performance of MF membrane as pretreatment option for wastewater reuse will be presented based on the literature survey and experiments conducted over the wastewater reuse pilot plant. The pilot plant was operated with a continuous data acquisition for about 300days under various chemical enhanced backwash (CEB) system with subsequent treated water quality analysis. Accordingly, assessment of the effluent revealed that the pretreated water is suitable enough to be used as an input for Reverse Osmosis (RO) unit and significant effect of CEB and concentration of NaOCl is also conceived from the analysis. Moreover, it's also observed that the application of various CEB condition over long operational hours induced a constant declination of overall performance of MF membrane.

• Membrane Journal
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.72-83
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• 2011

For advanced drinking water treatment of high turbidity water, we used the hybrid module that was composed of photocatalyst packing between outside of tubular ceramic microfiltration membrane and membrane module inside. Photocatalyst was PP (polypropylene) bead coated $TiO_2$ powder by CVD (chemical vapor deposition) process. Instead of natural organic matters (NOM) and fine inorganic particles in natural water source, modified solution was prepared with humic acid and kaolin. Water-back-flushing of 10 sec was performed per every period of 10 min to minimize membrane fouling. Resistance of membrane fouling ($R_f$) decreased and J increased as concentration of humic acid changed from 10 mg/L to 2 mg/L, and finally the highest total permeate volume ($V_T$) could be obtained at 2 mg/L. Then, treatment efficiencies of turbidity and $UV_{254}$ absorbance were above 98.5% and 85.7%, respectively. As results of treatment portions by membrane filtration, photocatalyst adsorption, and photo-oxidation in MF, MF + $TiO_2$, and MF + $TiO_2$ + UV processes, turbidity was treated little by photocatalyst adsorption, and photo-oxidation. However, treatment portions of humic acid by adsorption and photo-oxidation were above 10.7 and 8.6%, respectively.

• Membrane Journal
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.65-74
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• 2008

NOM and fine particles are the main target materials in water treatment using membranes. Particularly, humic substances extracted from soils are frequently used in many fundamental studies representing natural organic matter in raw water for drinking water treatment. In this study, ultrafiltration (UF) of artificial humic water and natural river water was conducted and the characteristics of removal efficiency and permeability were compared. In the UF of river water, the transmembrane pressure increased in the same pattern with that of 5 mg/L humic water. For the removal of organic matter and fine particles, however, two types of feed water had shown different trends. Kaolin particles and humic acids added to artificial water were better removed, while colloids and organics in natural water were relatively poorly removed. From the $UV_{254}$ and GPC analyses, it seemed that the hydrophobicity and size of humic substances contributed to the greater removal of organic matter. The UF membrane applied for humic water also showed a higher flux recovery by caustic chemical cleaning than that for river water.

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.34 no.6
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• pp.393-402
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• 2020

In the membrane process, it is important to improve water treatment efficiency to ensure water quality and minimize membrane fouling. In this study, a pilot study of membrane process using reservoir water was conducted for a long time to secure high flux operation technology capable of responding to influent turbidity changes. The raw water and DAF(Dissolved Air Flotation) treated water were used for influent water of membrane to analyze the effect of water quality on the TMP (Trans Membrane Pressure) and to optimize the membrane operation. When the membrane flux were operated at 70 LMH and 80 LMH under stable water quality conditions with an inlet turbidity of 10 NTU or less, the TMP increase rates were 0.28 and 0.24 kPa/d, respectively, with minor difference. When the membrane with high flux of 80 LMH was operated for a long time under inlet turbidity of 10 NTU or more, the TMP increase rate showed the maximum of 43.5 kPa/d. However, when the CEB(Chemically Enhanced Backwash) cycle was changed from 7 to 1 day, it was confirmed that the TMP increase rate was stable to 0.23 kPa/d. As a result of applying pre-treatment process(DAF) on unstability water quality conditions, it was confirmed that the TMP rise rates differed by 0.17 and 0.64 kPa/d according to the optimization of the coagulant injection. When combined with coagulation pretreatment, it was thought that the balance with the membrane process was more important than the emphasis on efficiency of the pretreatment process. It was considered that stable TMP can be maintained by optimizing the cleaning conditions when the stable or unstable water quality even in the high flux operation on membrane process.