Introduction

Pile Cloth Media Filtration (PCMF) is an established surface filtration process. It is considered as outside-in filtration process in which raw water flows through a Pile Cloth Media (PCM) whereby solids are removed as they get retained by the pile layer. The PCM consists of a filter-active fluidisable pile layer and a supporting non-filter-active backing. PCMF is able to close the gap between conventional surface or cake filtration and membrane filtration processes. Concerning PCMF technology, current trends are leaning towards finer 3D woven PCM, so that the removal efficiency is continuously being increased. Current PCM can be divided by their fiber thickness into the three different categories standard-, micro- and ultrafiber. Nowadays, microfiber (≥ 5 µm – < 10 µm) is the most common PCM in wastewater treatment applications for the removal of turbidity, total suspended solids, phosphorous, microplastic as well as powdered activated carbon. Continuous improvement of the engineered PCM is crucial for the success of the technology. The ...

Material and Method

The study was carried out in a parallel side-by-side test of PCMF drum units with 0.5 m² filter surface. Both plants share the same influent stream originating from a secondary clarifier of a municipal WWTP after a SBR process. Operating parameters were equal for all tests and are based on the standard settings. Five different microfiber PCM were investigated in the studies, four PCM with the same backing design (PES-14, MF1, MF3, MF4; > 800 µm x 800 µm flow-relevant pores) and one with a different backing design (MF2; > 300 µm x 300 µm flow-relevant pores). The filament yarns of the investigated PCM showed variations in texturing (PES-14; MF1 – MF3) and fiber length (MF4) ...

Results

PCM engineering aims to achieve high removal efficiency and improve operating conditions like backwash water amount, recovery, cloth resistance, and solids surface loading. PCM engineering has two components: the pile layer and the backing. The results demonstrate the ...