Treatment of oil sands process-affected water with ceramic ultrafiltration membrane: Effects of operating conditions on membrane performance

Water treatment technologies for the remediation of naphthenic acids in oil sands process-affected water

“…Alpatova et al [94] investigated the use of a commercial ceramic ultrafiltration membrane (TAMI Industries) to remove dissolved organic and inorganic solutes from OSPW samples collected from an active recycling pond in Fort McMurray, Alberta. The 250 mm long membrane module possessed 0.2 mm diameter internal channels, giving it a total effective surface area of 132 cm 2 .…”

“…However, the pressure across the membrane is also limited by the mechanical strength of the membrane material [96]. While fouling may, in some cases, be partially reversed through backwashing [94,95] or chemical treatment [94], it requires the additional use of water or some other solvent to redisperse membrane-bound compounds, which then must be stored or treated in some other manner. Therefore, while membrane filtration may aid in accelerating the reclamation process, it would likely require implementation in combination with other techniques, such as coagulation/flocculation [94,97,98].…”

“…Further, coagulation/flocculation processes are often cited as significant producers of sludge [85,88,91], while fouling and poor selectivity are frequent challenges for both membrane filtration and adsorption processes [91,92]. Given the apparent limitations of these individual processes, much of the emerging research in this field is directed toward the treatment of OSPW using a combination of techniques [76,94,97,98,110,113]. In some cases, this has allowed for a much more comprehensive reduction in NA concentration.…”

Pilot-scale study on the reverse osmosis treatment of oil sands tailings pond water: Impact of pretreatment on process performance

“…Endogenous population of microorganisms in RCW can readily form biofilms, which are able to degrade and remove NAs and other organic contaminants [12]. In terms of membrane filtration, synthetic polymeric and ceramic membranes have been used for the removal of oil, suspended solids, dissolved solids, and other contaminants from RCW [4,9,13]. Nanofiltration (NF) has been applied for the treatment of RCW, particularly for water softening and NA removal [4].…”

“…Pretreatment methods such as coagulationflocculation-sedimentation, with and without coagulant and coagulant aids were found to improve the desalination of RCW for both NF and reverse osmosis (RO) membranes [9]. Alpatova et al [13] reported that 1 kDa ceramic ultrafiltration membranes were suitable for the removal of inorganic and organic compounds from RCW, resulting in membrane permeates meeting the requirements for high pressure-driven membrane processes.…”