Advances in Drinking Water Treatment through Piloting with UF Membranes

Abstract

This manuscript presents the advances of a pilot testing, located in Spain, using ultrafiltration (UF) membranes to supply drinking water. These results could be extended to the islands of the Macaronesia area, for instance, Azores, Madeira, Canaries, and Cape Verde. The UF project targeted by the pilot activity is a refurbishment of an existing installation. The existing installation is located at a higher altitude, thus drinking water could be supplied to most of the island without further pumping, reducing the carbon footprint, ecological footprint, and energy consumption. The raw water is soft surface water (mainly of rainwater origin) coming from a dam. On the islands of Macaronesia, water is a scarce resource in high demand. Therefore, this is a technically and economically viable business opportunity with a promising future for isolated water treatment systems to produce drinking water on islands. The Macaronesia area is formed by volcanic islands with a small surface in the Atlantic Ocean, so usually there is not enough space for conventional technology and only a compact UF can be used. The raw water quality is not satisfactory and the municipality receives many complaints from end users, thus a potable water plant with UF membranes is in high demand to supply drinking water of good quality. Membrane processes can be categorized into various, related methods, three of which include the following: pore size, molecular weight cut-off, and operating pressure. Regarding the obtained results, the UF system successfully produced excellent filtrate quality with turbidity readings on average less than 0.03 NTU; furthermore, membrane instantaneous flux of 90 Lmh at 14 °C is achievable with long-term stability under various feed water conditions, peak operations are available at 105 Lmh without a large impact on the filtration performance of the modules, and CIP is only to be performed if the TMP increase reaches the terminal point.