The Water Corporation’s Harding Dam Water Treatment Plant (WTP) treats a surface water from a reservoir. The existing 50 mld plant uses a polymeric membrane system, and Water Corporation has expressed interest in evaluating ceramic membranes for treating this source.

PWN Technologies will manage this pilot study, which will  include pre-coagulation and ceramic microfiltration (with a single, 25 m2 membrane module), and some tests will be performed with pre-ozone. It is planned that the initial pilot program will include four weeks of start-up and commissioning followed by six months of pilot testing. In general, the approach for pilot testing is to optimize the pre-treatment, and then operate and optimize the ceramic membrane filtration.

The existing Harding Dam WTP includes raw water pumping, screening (10 mm), pre-chlorination, pH adjustment with sulphuric acid, coagulation with PACl, flocculation, membrane filtration, pH correction with NaOH, and final clearwell chlorination. The treatment goals center around turbidity removal, pathogen removal (i.e., Giardia and Cryptosporidium), and natural organic matter (NOM) removal to control disinfection by-product formation, which is enhanced by the high water temperatures during the summer.