Reverse osmosis as one-step wastewater treatment: a case study on groundwater pollution

The present case study is focused on performance evaluation of a Reverse Osmosis (RO) membrane based pilot plant to treat the ground/surface drinking water sources polluted by flood, rivers and/or canals. The RO plant was designed, fabricated and then operated with polluted water. Two feed water samples having a TDS of 2.000 mg · L⁻¹ and 10.000 mg · L⁻¹ respectively, were taken and analyzed for physical, chemical and microbiological contaminants. The RO plant was run once through over a span of 100 hrs at an operating pressure of 15 bar. TDS rejections were found to be more than 94% while permeate flux was measured to be 25.82 L · m⁻² · hr⁻¹ to 40.55 L · m⁻² · hr⁻¹. Results show that RO plant has a potential to remove physical, chemical and microbiological contaminants like Total Coliform and E. Coli in one step.