New Spatial-Globular Structure Polymer for Pre-Treatment in Reverse Osmosis Membrane Filtration

Kazakhstan is facing increasing water scarcity due to climate change and transboundary international water diversions. For this reason, low-quality water with high mineral content needs to be increasingly used in the future. A way to improve water quality for consumptive use is membrane treatment technology. In view of this, we investigated a new type of synthetic spatial-globular structure (SGS) polymers as a pre-treatment to reverse osmosis membrane filtration to increase its efficiency and service life. SGS polymer filters can be used as a pretreatment unit before ultrafiltration and reverse osmosis, providing filtration, suspended solids retention, and water softening. The investigated SGS polymer reduced the Ca content in the source water from 390 to about 1 mg/L with a purification effect of 99.7 %. The treatment as indicated by the contamination index CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER EF of the filters showed that the overall cleaning effect was 90 % or more. Thus, the use of the new pre-filtering SGS material with ion-exchange and sorption properties displayed good improvement for drinking water treatment and it can be used to increase the life of membrane devices.