This study investigated the removal characteristics of N-Nitrosamines and their precursors at three pilot-scale water reclamation plants. These plants applies different integrated membrane systems: (1) microfiltration (MF)/nanofiltration (NF)/reverse osmosis (RO) membrane; (2) sand filtration/three-stage RO; and (3) ultrafiltration (UF)/NF and UF/RO. Variable removal of N-Nitrosodimethylamine (NDMA) by the RO processes could be attributed to membrane fouling and the feed water temperature. The effect of membrane fouling on N-Nitrosamine removal was extensively evaluated at one of the plants by conducting one month of operation and chemical cleaning of the RO element. Membrane fouling enhanced N-Nitrosamine removal by the pilot-scale RO process. This finding contributes to better understanding of the variable removal of NDMA by RO processes. This study also investigated the removal characteristics of N-Nitrosamine precursors. The NF and RO processes greatly reduced NDMA formation potential (FP), but the UF process had little effect. The contributions of MF, NF, and RO processes for reducing FPs of NDMA, N-Nitrosopyrrolidine and N-Nitrosodiethylamine were different, suggesting different size distributions of their precursors.
Keywords: N-Nitrosamines; formation potential; membrane fouling; membrane treatment; pilot-scale; reverse osmosis.