Membrane Filtration Aids Spring Water Clean-up
In March of 2002, the Spring Creek (Utah) Water Plant went into production. This plant serves a residential community of 15,000 people, approximately ten miles southeast of Salt Lake City.
Prior to this installation, the community received spring water, which was chlorinated. Because this spring is under the influence of surface water and EPA requirements had become more rigorous, the Holliday Water Co., decided to implement a water purification system at this site.
Doug Hansen, treatment plant manager for the Spring Creek Water Plant at the Holliday Water Co., said, “in a residential community, it’s important to have a system that is relatively small and quiet.”
Thus, stringent pilot testing of three different systems was implemented. While all the systems had comparable features such as reverse filtration, air scrub and clean-in-place, the Aria Microfiltration Membrane System from Pall Corp. met all the requirements.
“It was cost-effective, modular to fit our limited area, had a quiet backwash and filtered prechlorinated water,” remarked Hansen.
Today, the Spring Creek Water Plant maintains 78 modules with 50 square meters of effective filtration surface area per module. It processes 1.2 mgd and 95% of the feedwater
Although levels of parasites such as Cryptosporidium and Giardia and carcinogens such as Trihalomethanes and Haloacetic acids are negligible in this source, springs typically have problems with turbidity said Hansen.
“With the installation of the Pall Aria Microfiltration Membrane System, the average turbidity in our water output decreased from 0.3 NTU to 0.021 NTU,” he said.
The EPA requires that drinking water have less than or equal to 0.3 NTU in at least 95% of the measurements and at no time should exceed 1 NTU. Thus, the Spring Creek Water Plant now provides water to its population that is above and beyond that of EPA regulations.
“We’ve been operating with the Aria Microfiltration Membrane System for about a year and half,” said Hansen, “and the system has never failed any integrity testing.”