High-pressure membrane system like nanofiltration(NF) and reverse osmosis(RO) was investigated as a part of water treatment processes to produce high quality potable water with low organic matter concentration through membrane module tests and design simulation. River water and sand filtration permeate in Busan D water treatment plant were selected as feed water, and NE4040-90 and RE4040-Fen(Toray Chemical Korea) were used as NF and RO membranes, respectively. Total organic carbon(TOC) concentrations of NF and RO permeates were mostly below 0.5 mg/l and the average TOC removal rates of NF and RO membranes were 93.99% and 94.28%, respectively, which means NF used in this study is competitive with RO in terms of organic matter removal ability. Different from ions rejection tendency, the TOC removal rate increases at higher recovery rates, which is because the portion of higher molecular weight materials in the concentrated raw water with increasing recovery rate increases. Discharge of NF/RO concentrates to rivers may not be acceptable because the increased TDS concentration of the concentrates can harm the river eco-system. Thus, the idea of using NF/RO concentrate as the raw water for industrial water production was introduced. The design simulation results with feed water and membranes used in this work reveal that the raw water guideline can be satisfied if the recovery rate of NF/RO system is designed below 80%.

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.

알루미나 콜로이드 용액의 막여과에서 막모듈의 중력에 대한 경사각 변화로 유발된 자연대류 불안정 흐름(natural convection instability flow, NCIF)의 콜로이드 물질의 막오염 제어 효과를 정압(constant-pressure) 막여과 시 플럭스 증가와 정투과량(constant-flux) 막여과 시 막차압 감소 정도로 측정하고, 플럭스 결과를 막힘여과 모델로 해석하였다. 막모듈의 경사각이 0°에서 180°로 커지면 NCIF 유발이 증가하여 막오염 제어 효과가 커져 2시간의 막여과에서 플럭스는 최대 2.8배까지 증가하고, 막차압은 최대 85%까지 감소하였다. 막힘여과 모델을 적용하여 NCIF의 유발에 따른 플럭스 결과를 해석하여 운전 시간 15분 이내에서는 중간막힘모델 그 이후에는 케이크여과모델로 평가하는 것이 타당하였다. 막모듈 경사각 180°에서 유발 된 NCIF는 15분 이내의 운전 초기에는 중간막힘 오염을 52% 감소시키고, 그 이후의 운전 시간에서는 케이크층 오염을 93% 감소시켰다. 따라서 막모듈에 유발된 NCIF의 주된 막오염 제어기작은 막표면에의 입자상 콜로이드 물질의 케이크층 형성을 억제시키는 것으로 평가하였다.

BSA 용액의 전량 한외여과에서 막모듈의 중력에 대한 경사각(0~180°) 변화에 따라 유발된 자연대류 불안정 흐름 (natural convection instability flow; NCIF)의 막오염 제어 효과를 플럭스 증가 정도로 측정하고 막힘여과 모델로 해석하였다. 막모듈의 경사각이 0°에서 180°로 커질수록 NCIF 유발이 증가하여 막오염 제어 효과가 커져 플럭스가 증가하였다. NCIF의 유발이 가장 큰 경사각 180°에서의 플럭스 값을 NCIF의 유발이 없는 0°에서의 값과 비교한 결과, 2시간의 단기간 운전에서는 플럭스 향상성이 5배, 20시간의 장기간 운전에서는 17배까지 증가하였다. 막힘여과 모델을 적용하여 NCIF의 유발에 따른 플럭스 증가 효과를 해석한 결과, 운전시간 15분 이내에서는 중간막힘 모델 그 이후에는 케이크여과 모델로 해석하는 것이 타당하였다. 막모듈 경사각 180°에서 유발된 NCIF는 15분 이내의 운전 초기에는 중간막힘 오염을 67%까지 감소시키고, 그 이후의 운전 시간에서는 케이크층 오염을 99.9%까지 감소시켰다. 따라서 막모듈에 유발된 NCIF의 주된 막오염 제어 기작은 케이크층 형성을 억제시키는 것이었다.

A Gravity-driven membrane (GDM) system is one of the promising solutions for household drinking water treatment in the developing countries. In this study, the GDM system was tested for optimizing manual cleaning protocols using three different feed water solutions. Two types of manual cleaning were performed to delay the permeability decrease, cleaning between batches and long-term cleaning. The optimized cleaning between batches protocol was 3 twisting and 10 vertical shaking. And the optimized long-term cleaning protocol was 70 vertical shaking for both the middle region of the module and near the header part. These cleaning protocols allowed the system to produce sufficient water to meet the daily minimum water requirements for a 5-person family, even for using the wastewater influent. The system produced Escherichia coli free water.

The water containing soluble manganese may cause problems such as discolored water, unpleasant taste, fouling or scaling of pipes in water distribution system, and so on. Conventional water treatment processes using sand filtration or sedimentation after oxidation, however, cannot often meet manganese standard for drinking water. Two types of oxidants, potassium permanganate (KMnO4) and sodium hypochlorite (NaOCl), were utilized at the same time for manganese oxidation, and then the precipitated manganese oxides were removed by low pressure membrane filtration in this study. In batch experiments, the multiple injection of both oxidants showed more effective manganese removal than did the single injection using either of them. Moreover, the deterioration of manganese removal at low temperature was less serious for the multiple injection than that for the single injection. Manganese removal by the continuous system of oxidation by multiple injection combined with membrane filtration was higher than those by batch experiments at the same oxidation conditions. In addition, less membrane fouling was observed for membrane filtration with oxidation during continuous membrane filtration than membrane filtration without oxidation. These results indicate that the oxidation by multiple injection coupled with membrane filtration was efficient and applicable to actual water treatment for manganese removal.

막여과 정수장에 고농도 망간이 유입될 경우 심각한 막오염을 유발할 수 있어 망간에 대한 제어가 필요하다. 최근 수처리제로 등록된 NaMnO4의 경우 짧은 반응시간에 망간 제거가 가능하여 정수장 적용이 유리할 것으로 기대되고 있다. 본 연구에서는 NaMnO4 주입에 따른 망간 제거 성능과 막의 여과유속에 미치는 영향을 평가하였다. 유입망간농도 대비 NaMnO4 주입 조건을 평가한 결과반응시간 5분 이내 1배, 1.5배 조건에서 약 90% 이상의 망간 제거 효율을 나타내었으며 0.5배, 2배 조건에서는 제거효율이 감소되었다. 또한, NaMnO4 주입조건과 미주입 조건에 대한 여과유속을 평가한 결과 미주입 조건과 비교하여 주입조건에서의 막오염이 저감되어 미주입 조건과 비교하여 유과유속이 높게 유지되었다.

Membrane filtration has been considered as an promising harvesting technology in the fields of microalgal biorefinery to produce biofuels and valuable chemicals from microalgal biomass. For developing the effective membrane-based harvesting process to produce highly concentrated biomass, membrane fouling should be controlled because it leads to not only reduced filtration rate but also insufficient reachable concentration of harvested biomass for downstream process. For that, a dynamic filtration using a rotating disk was evaluated in this study, efficiently generating high shear flow near the membrane surface by an independently moving part. It was demonstrated to achieve feasible filtration performance even under high biomass concentration with complete biomass recovery and moderate energy consumption observed.

In this study, the effects of operating conditions on the formation of reversible and irreversible fouling were investigated in the filtration using ceramic membrane for water treatment process. The effect of coagulation pretreatment on fouling formation was also evaluated by comparing the performance of membrane filtration both with and without addition of coagulant. A resistance-in-series-model was applied for the analysis of membrane fouling. Total resistance (RT) and internal fouling resistance (Rf) increased in the membrane filtration process without coagulation as membrane flux and feed water concentrations increased. Internal fouling resistance, which was not recovered by physical cleaning, was more than 70% of the total resistance at the range of the membrane flux more than 5 m3/m2･day. In the combined process with coagulation, the cake layer resistance (Rc) increased to about 30-80% of total resistance. As the cake layer formed by coagulation floc was easily removed by physical cleaning, the recovery rate by physical cleaning was 54~90%. It was confirmed from the results that the combined process was more efficient to recover the filtration performance by physical cleaning due to higher formation ratio of reversible fouling, resulted in the mitigation of the frequency of chemical cleaning.

In water treatment process using microfiltration membranes, manganese is a substance that causes inorganic membrane fouling. As a result of analysis on the operation data taken from I WTP(Water Treatment Plant), it was confirmed that the increase of TMP was very severe during the period of manganese inflow. The membrane fouling fastened the increase of TMP and shortened the service time of filtration or the cleaning cycle. The TMP of the membrane increased to the maximum of 2.13 kgf/cm2, but it was recovered to the initial level (0.17 kgf/cm2) by the 1st acid cleaning step. It was obvious that the main membrane fouling contaminants are due to inorganic substances. As a result of the analysis on the chemical waste, the concentrations of aluminum(146-164 mg/L) and manganese(110-126 mg/L) were very high. It is considered that aluminum was due to the residual unreacted during coagulation step as a pretreatment process. And manganese is thought to be due to the adsorption on the membrane surface as an adsorbate in feed water component during filtration step. For the efficient maintenance of the membrane filtration facilities, optimization of chemical concentration and CIP conditions is very important when finding the abnormal level of influent including foulants such as manganese.

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/㎥ for sand filtration and 79.98KRW/㎥ 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/m3 and 79.71KRW/m3 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.

In this study, it is estimated that ceramic membrane process which can operate stably in harsh conditions replacing existing organic membrane connected with coagulation, sedimentation etc. . Jar-test was conducted by using artificial raw water containing kaolin and humic acid. It was observed that coagulant (A-PAC, 10.6%) 4mg/l is the optimal dose. As a results of evaluation of membrane single filtration process (A), coagulation-membrane filtration process (B) and coagulation-sedimentation-membrane filtration process (C), TMP variation is stable regardless of in Flux 2 m3/m2･day. But in Flux 5 m3/m2･day, it show change of 1-89.3 kpa by process. TMP of process (B) and (C) is increased 11.8, 0.6 kpa each. But, the (A) showed the greatest change of TMP. When evaluate (A) and (C) in Flux 10 m3/m2･day, TMP of (A) stopped operation being exceeded 120 kpa in 20 minutes. On the other hand, TMP of (C) is increased only 3 kpa in 120 minutes. Through this, membrane filtration process can be operated stably by using the linkage between the pretreatment process and the ceramic membrane filtration process. Turbidity of treated water remained under 0.1 NTU regardless of flux condition and DOC and UV254 showed a removal rate of 65-85%, 95% more each at process connected with pretreatment. Physical cleaning was carried out using water and air of 500kpa to show the recovery of pollutants formed on membrane surface by filtration. In (A) process, TMP has increased rapidly and decreased the recovery by physical cleaning as the flux rises. This means that contamination on membrane surface is irreversible fouling difficult to recover by using physical cleaning. Process (B) and (C) are observed high recovery rate of 60% more in high flux and especially recovery rate of process (B) is the highest at 95.8%. This can be judged that the coagulation flocs in the raw water formed cake layer with irreversible fouling and are favorable to physical cleaning. As a result of estimation, observe that ceramic membrane filtration connected with pretreatment improves efficiency of filtration and recovery rate of physical cleaning. And ceramic membrane which is possible to operate in the higher flux than organic membrane can be reduce the area of water purification facilities and secure a stable quantity of water by connecting the ceramic membrane with pretreatment process.