Study on the reuse of production wastewater with submerged ultrafiltration membrane

Production wastewater (PWW) produced at water treatment plants is an inescapable byproduct and most of it has long been treated as a waste. UF offers a suitable treatment for PWW in order to guarantee a water quality necessary for reuse. The aim of this study was to evaluate the performance of submerged membrane filtration for reducing NOM and the effects of backwash. Turbidity was almost removed to less than 0.11NTU and the removal rate of each series of particle size could be 99.99%. In a membrane-blocking formation comparable filtration system, the filtration resistance due to cake formation fouling was far more three-fold higher than that due to concentration polarization. The minimum TMP due to membrane fouling progressively increased from 0.052 MPa to 0.055 MPa during the operation. Backwash operation can effectively restrain particle fouling and therefore reduce filtration resistances, especially for the cake resistance. The IMP decreases from 0.065 MPa to 0.053MPa after backwash operation.