title: Integrating powdered activated carbon into wastewater tertiary filter for micro-pollutant removal.
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 pre-embedded 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.
authors.affiliation: Department of Municipal Engineering, School of Civil Engineering and Architecture, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan, China; Department of Water Management, Faculty of Civil Engineering and Geoscience, Delft University of Technology, P.O. Box 5048, 2600, GA, Delft, The Netherlands. Electronic address: j.hu-1@tudelft.nl.
authors.forename: Jingyi
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Hu
authors.affiliation: Department of Water Management, Faculty of Civil Engineering and Geoscience, Delft University of Technology, P.O. Box 5048, 2600, GA, Delft, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Annelies
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Aarts
authors.affiliation: Department of Water Management, Faculty of Civil Engineering and Geoscience, Delft University of Technology, P.O. Box 5048, 2600, GA, Delft, The Netherlands. Electronic address: r.shang@tudelft.nl.
authors.forename: Ran
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Shang
authors.affiliation: Department of Water Management, Faculty of Civil Engineering and Geoscience, Delft University of Technology, P.O. Box 5048, 2600, GA, Delft, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Bas
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Heijman
authors.affiliation: Department of Water Management, Faculty of Civil Engineering and Geoscience, Delft University of Technology, P.O. Box 5048, 2600, GA, Delft, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Luuk
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Rietveld
mesh_terms: D000327:Adsorption; D002606:Charcoal / Q000737:chemistry*; D005374:Filtration / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods*; D014865:Waste Disposal, Fluid / Q000379:methods; D062065:Wastewater / Q000032:analysis / Q000737:chemistry*; D014874:Water Pollutants, Chemical / Q000032:analysis* / Q000737:chemistry; D018508:Water Purification / Q000379:methods*
chemical_list: D002606:Charcoal; D062065:Wastewater; D014874:Water Pollutants, Chemical
keywords: Organic micro-pollutants; Powdered activated carbon; Pre-embedding; Secondary effluent; Tertiary filter