Comparison of different combined treatment processes to address the source water with high concentration of natural organic matter during snowmelt period

The source water in one forest region of the Northeast China had very high natural organic matter (NOM) concentration and heavy color during snowmelt period. The efficiency of five combined treatment processes was compared to address the high concentration of NOM and the mechanisms were also analyzed. Conventional treatment can hardly remove dissolved organic carbon (DOC) in the source water. KMnO4 pre-oxidization could improve the DOC removal to 22.0%. Post activated carbon adsorption improved the DOC removal of conventional treatment to 28.8%. The non-sufficient NOM removal could be attributed to the dominance of large molecular weight organic matters in raw water, which cannot be adsorbed by the micropore upon activated carbon. O3 + activated carbon treatment are another available technology for eliminating the color and UV254 in water. However, its performance of DOC removal was only 36.4%, which could not satisfy the requirement for organic matter. The limited ozone dosage is not sufficient to mineralize the high concentration of NOM. Magnetic ion-exchange resin combined with conventional treatment could remove 96.2% of color, 96.0% of UV254 and 87.1% of DOC, enabling effluents to meet the drinking water quality standard. The high removal efficiency could be explained by the negative charge on the surface of NOM which benefits the static adsorption of NOM on the anion exchange resin. The results indicated that magnetic ion-exchange resin combined with conventional treatment is the best available technology to remove high concentration of NOM.