Integrating powdered activated carbon into wastewater tertiary filter for micro-pollutant removal

Jingyi Hu, Annelies Aarts, Ran Shang, Bas Heijman, Luuk Rietveld

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleScientificpeer-review

21 Citations (Scopus)
259 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Integrating powdered activated carbon (PAC) into wastewater tertiary treatment is a promising technology to reduce organic micro-pollutant (OMP) discharge into the receiving waters. To take advantage of the existing tertiary filter, PAC was pre-embedded inside the filter bed acting as a fixed-bed adsorber. The pre-embedding (i.e. immobilization) of PAC was realized by direct dosing a PAC solution on the filter top, which was then promoted to penetrate into the filter media by a down-flow of tap water. In order to examine the effectiveness of this PAC pre-embedded filter towards OMP removal, batch adsorption tests, representing PAC contact reactor (with the same PAC mass-to-treated water volume ratio as in the PAC pre-embedded filter) were performed as references. Moreover, as a conventional dosing option, PAC was dosed continuously with the filter influent (i.e. the wastewater secondary effluent with the investigated OMPs). Comparative results confirmed a higher OMP removal efficiency associated with the PAC preembedded filter, as compared to the batch system with a practical PAC residence time. Furthermore, over a filtration period of 10 h (approximating a realistic filtration cycle for tertiary filters), the continuous dosing approach resulted in less OMP removal. Therefore, it was concluded that the pre-embedding approach can be preferentially considered when integrating PAC into the wastewater tertiary treatment for OMP elimination.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)45-52
Number of pages7
JournalJournal of Environmental Management
Volume177
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2016

Keywords

  • Powdered activated carbon
  • Organic micro-pollutants
  • Secondary effluent
  • Tertiary filter
  • Pre-embedding

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Integrating powdered activated carbon into wastewater tertiary filter for micro-pollutant removal'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this