Ground Water Pre-Filtration Using Ceramic UF

Year: 2010

Capacity: 42,000 m³/d

Application: Ground water UF

Location: Buraydah, Saudi Arabia

Project Targets

• Removal of iron, manganese, and radium

• Improvement of filtered water quality

• Improvement of recovery rate

ItN was introduced to the water supply plant in Buraydah city, because of its unstable conditions and high operational costs. The old polymer UF hollow fibre membrane was installed as the pre-filtration step during phase 1, which caused three major problems for the water supply plant.

1. Broken Hollow Fibres

The high temperatures and very frequent backwashing broke many hollow fibres after only a few months of filtration. This caused high effluent SID and turbidity values.

2. Treatment Targets Were Missed

3. Fibre Clogged and Broken

Membrane Integration

ItN has designed a special rack from stainless AISI 316L to fit into the existing concrete tanks of the Buraydah plant and has have them approved by NSF due to ANSI 61.

The solution provided to the customer require no additional civil works to install the membranes.

Process Adaptation

The CFM-System carries a nano-coating on top of the membrane body (pic. 9), which provides a non-stick property and makes it very easy to get rid of the cake-layer by simple backwash with permeate (pic. 8).