Bench-Scale RO Systems for Potable Reuse

水是人类最重要的资源。然而，世界上60%以上的人口无法获得丰富而安全的饮用水。随着全球人口的增长、地下水供应的过度开发、淡水资源的持续污染以及气候变化引起的干旱影响，饮用水的供应受到威胁。饮用水再利用是将废水处理到可以作为饮用水安全饮用的水平的过程。这一过程对于解决全球饮用水短缺问题至关重要，特别是在世界上的大城市中心和/或干旱易发地区。生产饮用水的废水处理必须安全进行。为了做到这一点，膜处理和紫外线消毒的组合已被提出。使用微滤（MF）和反渗透（RO）膜的工艺系列的膜处理去除废水中的所有污染物。紫外线消毒是最后的过程，它灭活了所有可能残留在膜后处理水中的细菌和病毒。在膜过滤步骤中，膜可能会被废水中的成分污染。为了防止反渗透膜在运行过程中结垢，定期向给水中添加阻垢剂和防污剂，如氯胺。然而，这些阻垢剂和防污剂会穿过膜，进入最终的紫外线消毒步骤。这些防垢剂和防污剂抑制UV光，降低UV透射率。当UV透射率降低时，UV消毒的有效性降低，从而需要更大的UV AOP系统尺寸来考虑潜在的UV清除。拟议的项目研究新的膜，可以减少防污剂和防垢剂的数量，这将最大限度地提高紫外线消毒过程的有效性。减少防污剂和阻垢剂的使用将降低处理废水以供饮用水再利用的总成本。

Water is the most important resource for humanity. Yet, abundant and safe drinking water is not available toover 60% of the world's population. The availability of potable water is under threat with growing globalpopulations, over-tapped ground water supplies, the continued contamination of fresh water sources, and thedrought-inducing impacts of climate change. Potable reuse is the process of treating wastewater to the level atwhich it can be safely consumed as drinking water. This process is critical to address global drinking watershortages, specifically in large municipal centers and/or drought-prone regions of the world. Treatment ofwastewater to produce drinking water must be done safely. In order to do this a combination of membranetreatment and UV disinfection has been proposed. Membrane treatment using a process train of microfiltration(MF) and reverse osmosis (RO) membranes removes all the contaminants in wastewater. UV disinfection is thefinal process and it inactivates all bacteria and viruses that may remain in the post-membrane treated water.During the membrane filtration steps the membranes can become fouled by the constituents of wastewater. Toprevent RO membrane fouling during operation anti-scalants and anti-foulants, such as chloramine, areperiodically added to the feed water. These anti-scalants and anti-foulants, however, pass through themembrane and enter the final UV disinfection step. These anti-scalants and anti-foulants scavenge UV lightreducing UV transmittance. The UV disinfection has a decreased effectiveness when the UV transmittance isreduced, thereby necessitating a larger UV AOP system size to account for the potential UV scavenging. Theproposed project investigates new membranes that can reduce the amount of anti-foulants and anti-scalantsrequired, which will maximize the effectiveness of the UV disinfection process. Reducing anti-foulant andanti-scalant use will reduce the overall cost of treating wastewater for potable reuse.