Significant increase of assimilable organic carbon (AOC) levels in MBR effluents followed by coagulation, ozonation and combined treatments: Implications for biostability control of reclaimed water

doi:10.1007/s11783-020-1360-8

Front. Environ. Sci. Eng.

2021, Vol. 15

Issue (4) : 68 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11783-020-1360-8

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Significant increase of assimilable organic carbon (AOC) levels in MBR effluents followed by coagulation, ozonation and combined treatments: Implications for biostability control of reclaimed water

Xiaojie Shi¹, Zhuo Chen¹(

), Yun Lu¹, Qi Shi¹, Yinhu Wu¹, Hong-Ying Hu^1,²

¹. Environmental Simulation and Pollution Control State Key Joint Laboratory, State Environmental Protection Key Laboratory of Microorganism Application and Risk Control (SMARC), School of Environment, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
². Shenzhen Environmental Science and New Energy Technology Engineering Laboratory, Tsinghua-Berkeley Shenzhen Institute, Shenzhen 518055, China

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Abstract

• Annual AOCs in MBR effluents were stable with small increase in warmer seasons.

• Significant increase in AOC levels of tertiary effluents were observed.

• Coagulation in prior to ozonation can reduce AOC formation in tertiary treatment.

• ∆UV₂₅₄ and SUVA can be surrogates to predict the AOC changes during ozonation.

As water reuse development has increased, biological stability issues associated with reclaimed water have gained attention. This study evaluated assimilable organic carbon (AOC) in effluents from a full-scale membrane biological reactor (MBR) plant and found that they were generally stable over one year (125–216 µg/L), with slight increases in warmer seasons. After additional tertiary treatments, the largest increases in absolute and specific AOCs were detected during ozonation, followed by coagulation-ozonation and coagulation. Moreover, UV₂₅₄ absorbance is known to be an effective surrogate to predict the AOC changes during ozonation. Applying coagulation prior to ozonation of MBR effluents for removal of large molecules was found to reduce the AOC formation compared with ozonation treatment alone. Finally, the results revealed that attention should be paid to seasonal variations in influent and organic fraction changes during treatment to enable sustainable water reuse.

Keywords Assimilable organic carbon (AOC) MBR effluents Tertiary treatments Coagulation Ozonation

Corresponding Author(s): Zhuo Chen

Issue Date: 23 October 2020

Cite this article:

Xiaojie Shi,Zhuo Chen,Yun Lu, et al. Significant increase of assimilable organic carbon (AOC) levels in MBR effluents followed by coagulation, ozonation and combined treatments: Implications for biostability control of reclaimed water[J]. Front. Environ. Sci. Eng., 2021, 15(4): 68.

URL:

https://academic.hep.com.cn/fese/EN/10.1007/s11783-020-1360-8
https://academic.hep.com.cn/fese/EN/Y2021/V15/I4/68

Tab.1 Water qualities of collected secondary effluents

Fig.1 Annual and seasonal variations of AOC levels in MBR and tertiary effluents (a) Annual variation; (b) Seasonal variation.

Fig.2 Frequencies of specific AOC levels in secondary and tertiary effluents. Notes: Bars and curves depict the frequencies and distributions of specific AOC levels respectively. Statistical data were collected from scientific papers of past 15 years and sourced from ^{Chen et al. (2018b)}.

Fig.3 Absolute and specific AOC levels after MBR and tertiary treatments (a) specific values; (b) variations.

Fig.4 AOC and DOC variations of MBR effluents after tertiary treatments.

Fig.5 AOC and SUVA variations of MBR effluents after tertiary treatments.

Fig.6 Relationship between decreases in UV₂₅₄ absorbance and increases in AOC formation during ozonation treatment.

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