ABSTRACT
Pretreatment can increase the flux of the membrane treatment of algae-rich water by microfiltration, which has guiding significance for rapid algae removal in river and lake basins. In order to explore the effect of microfiltration treatment of algae-rich water and the control efficiency on membrane fouling of different pretreatment processes, three different pretreatment processes including diatomite, cotton plant, and powdered activated carbon (PAC) were employed in the pretreatment process. The results showed that the diatomite pretreatment could improve the filtration flux by 915%, which was significantly better than PAC and cotton plant pretreatment. PAC pretreatment could effectively adsorb aromatic protein-like compounds and obviously reduce the resistance of irreversible chemical fouling. By analyzing the cake layer structure and membrane surface morphology of fouled membrane, it was found that the membrane fouling caused by direct microfiltration was the most serious, while diatomite pretreatment could alleviate membrane fouling by optimizing cake layer structure and increasing roughness. Meanwhile, the XDLVO theoretical results further confirmed that diatomite pretreatment had the best alleviating effect on membrane fouling.
