Performance and Sustainability Evaluation SIX~?-Ceramac~? in Comparison with Conventional Pre-Treatment Techniques for Surface Water Treatment

摘要

This paper reviews the progress that has been made during the last four years within the research facilities of PWN. This has resulted in a new pre-treatment process for the direct treatment of water containing high amounts of suspended matter, dissolved organic carbon and nitrate, such as surface waters, based on ion exchange (SIX~?) and ceramic microfiltration (Ceramac~?). This paper specifically reviews the results of a performance evaluation that has been made of this new pre-treatment process in comparison with conventional pre-treatment techniques, in this case enhanced coagulation followed by rapid sand filtration. Based on the outcome of this study a new treatment facility has been designed with these new processes which will be operational in 2013 with a capacity of 5000m~3/h, this comparison study however is based on a maximum capacity of 4000 m~3/h. This new pre-treatment leads to a superior water quality, reduced energy consumption, less waste and a smaller carbon footprint. Current state of the art on decision making on implementation of new drinking water pretreatment processes, assesses not only water quality and costs but values environmental impact as equally crucial. The objective of this research is to compare pretreatment based on CSF to pretreatment based on SIX~?/CeraMac~? in terms of LCA. To determine which pretreatment is more sustainable in terms of energy consumption and carbon footprint an initial LCA was performed. Energy consumption served as the method from which the impact assessment carbon footprint (CO_2-E_q) will be derived.