Characteristic of algogenic organic matter and its effect on UF membrane fouling

Abstract

Algogenic organic matter (AOM) was extracted from blue-green algae (cyanobacteria) and its characteristic was determined by various methods including high-pressure size-exclusion chromatography (HP-SEC), hydrophobic and hydrophilic fractionation, molecular weight (MW) fractionation and fluorescence excitation emission matrix (EEM). The results revealed that AOM was hydrophilic fractionation predominantly, accounting for 78%. The specific ultraviolet absorbance of AOM was 1.1 L/(mg m) only. The analysis for MW distribution demonstrated that organic matter greater than 30,000 MW accounted for over 40% and was composed of mostly neutral hydrophilic compound. EEM analyses revealed that protein-like and humic-substances existed in AOM. A test for membrane filtration exhibited that AOM could make ultrafiltration membrane substantial flux decline, which can be attributed to membrane pore clog caused by neutral hydrophilic compound with larger MW.

Application of coagulation‐ultrafiltration‐nanofiltration in a pilot study for Tai Lake water treatment

“…The membrane filtration can remove more hydrophilic substances than hydrophobic substances. This indicated that the hydrophilic substances and proteins are main UF membrane fouling contributors (Li et al, ). And the inline coagulation can remove more organics than direct UF.…”

The control of emerging haloacetamide DBP precursors with UV/persulfate treatment

“…The mobile phase solution was made with 0.05 M KH 2 PO 4 , and 0.03 M NaOH. Polyethylene glycols (PEGs) and sodium polystyrene sulfonates (PSSs) (PEGs: 200, 1400 Da; PSS: 3610, 6800, 15450, 31000 Da) were used as standards for calibration (Li et al, 2011). A simultaneous determination method, combining solidphase extraction (SPE) enrichment, HPLC, and triple quadrupole MS (tqMS) with atmospheric pressure chemical ionization (APCI), using selective reaction monitoring (SRM) in the positive mode, was developed in a previous study (Chu et al, 2012a) and applied in the current study.…”

Ultrafiltration membrane fouling caused by extracellular organic matter (EOM) from Microcystis aeruginosa: Effects of membrane pore size and surface hydrophobicity

“…As UF can effectively remove algal cells without destroying them, it has a great potential for algae-rich water treatment [10]. However, the deposition of algal cells and extracellular organic matter (EOM) on the membrane can cause severe membrane fouling, especially for EOM which is a typical type of autochthonous natural organic matter (NOM) [11,12]. Henderson et al extracted and characterized the EOM from cyanobacteria, green algae and diatoms, and found that the EOM was comprised of proteins, polysaccharides and humic-like substances [13].…”