Performance of advanced water treatment plant for removing Fe, Mn and organic pollutants from raw water

In the case of treating a source water containing higher concentrations of Fe²⁺, Mn²⁺ and organic pollutants, the Fe²⁺ was partially removed by pretreatment steps of aeration-sand filtration, while Mn²⁺ and organics were removed mainly by an ozonation-BAC process. The performance of the advanced treatment plant and removal mechanisms are studied in this paper. The optimal O₃ dosage and residual O₃ were found to be 4 mg l⁻¹ and 0.4 mg l⁻¹, respectively, for which the Fe²⁺, Mn²⁺ and COD_Mn removals reached 98%, 95% and 85.5% respectively.

GC/MS analytical results showed that the advanced water treatment plant was very efficient in micro-organic pollutant removal. The total species decreased from 59 in the raw water to 50, 40 and 26 in the effluents of the sand filter, ozonation column and BAC filter, respectively. The priority and potentially hazardous pollutant species decreased from 16 in the raw water to 10, 8 and 5 in the corresponding effluents, respectively.