The treatment of oil sands process-affected water by submerged ceramic membrane microfiltration system

Abstract

With the rapid expansion of the oil sands exploitation in Northern Alberta over the past decade, oil sands process-affected water (OSPW) management has become a significant issue. In this study, the use of a submerged microfiltration was proposed as a potential process for pretreating OSPW. Suspended solids in OSPW were removed by unmodified ceramic membrane and SiO2 and TiO2 modified ceramic membranes. The direct coagulation-flocculation (CF) and increasing feed water pH successfully reduced fouling of unmodified ceramic membrane. Further studies conducted on surface modified membranes demonstrated that membrane surface charge was the main factor to ceramic membrane fouling behavior. In addition, membrane surface roughness has also shown a significant impact on fouling accumulation. However, the removals of components in OSPW (with more than 93% removal of total suspended solids and less than 15% removal of organics) remained the same in all filtration runs regardless of CF, pH or membrane materials.