Transfer and transport of aluminum in filtration unit

Aluminum salt coagulants were used prevalently in various water works. In this article, the effects of filtration on residual aluminum concentration and species distribution were researched by determining the concentration of different aluminum species before and after single layer filter, double layer filter, and membrane filtration units. In the research, size exclusion chromatography (SEC) was used to separate colloidal and soluble aluminum, ion exchange chromatography (IEC) was used to separate organic and inorganic aluminum, and inductivity coupled plasma-atomic emission spectrometry (ICP-AES) was used to determine the aluminum concentration. The results showed that the rapid filtration process had the ability of removing residual aluminum from coagulant effluent water, and that double layer filtration was more effective in residual aluminum removal than single layer filtration, while nano filtration was more effective than micro filtration. It was found that when the residual aluminum concentration was below 1 mg/L in sediment effluent, the residual aluminum concentration in treated water was above 0.2 mg/L. The direct rapid filtration process mainly removed the suspended aluminum. The removal of soluble and colloidal aluminum was always less than 10% and the natural small particles that adsorbed the amount of soluble or small particles aluminum on their surface were difficult to be removed in this process. Micro filtration and nano filtration were good technologies for removing aluminum; the residual aluminum concentration in the effluent was less than 0.05 mg/L.