Pretreatment of High TOC Surface Waters to Minimize DBP Formation after Membrane Filtration

Low-pressure membrane (LPM) technologies are becoming increasingly common in drinking water treatment, especially for the removal of disinfection byproduct (DBP) precursors. Removal of DBP precursors by LPMs requires pretreatment that may mitigate or exacerbate membrane fouling. A review of relevant literature has indicated that although a number of studies have evaluated a variety of pretreatments for one of these purposes, few studies could be identified that evaluated both DBP formation and membrane fouling concurrently in order to select effective pretreatment schemes. The work described in this paper was performed with the goal of identifying pretreatments that minimize both membrane fouling and DBP formation while being economically viable. In addition, the impact of various pretreatments on the formation of classes of emerging DBPs of concern were evaluated, which to the best of our knowledge, has not yet been studied.