Physical and Numerical Modeling Research

This project responded to the current demands of the drinking water treatment industry for the development of innovative technologies to effectively remove emerging pollutants from surface waters according to stringent environmental regulations. The appearance of emerging pollutants including engineered nanoparticles in surface waters and their potential impact on living organisms have become a major environmental issue, currently requiring the development of effective methods for their removal. These hazardous contaminants are introduced into the environment through the discharge of municipal and industrial effluents since conventional wastewater treatment technologies are incapable of their efficient removal. This project demonstrated the development of a laboaratory-scale advanced drinking water treatment system that uses ozonation-ultraviolet radiation to remove hazardous emerging contaminants, while reducing the concentrations of disinfection by-products such as trihalomethane (THM) and haloacetic acids (HAAs) below environmental standards, enabling the production of drinking water at high quality.  The developed treatment process expands the capacity of the Dagua technology that uses ozonation and membrane ultrafiltration in the removal of emerging contaminants and optimized water disinfection, while minimizing the generation of toxic oxidation byproducts. Special focus of this project was on the impact of operating parameters including water flow rate, ozone dose rate and UV radiation intensity on the removal efficiencies and removal rates of pollutants.