Affordable Water Filtration Technology for Disinfection By-Product Control for Small Rural Communities by Using Carbon Extracted from Local Fly Ash

The fly ash generated from local pulp and paper industries was transformed into activated carbon (AC) through physical activation process in a high temperature tube furnace in this study. Effects of two factors including activation temperature and activation time were investigated. Iodine number (IN), methylene blue value (MBV), and surface microstructure were all analyzed to assess the adsorption capacity of different carbon samples. The surface area of the carbon sample increased significantly from 486.44 m2/g to 847.26 m2/g before and after activation. The jar tests revealed that the use of 0.5 g (AC)/L (water) has the highest adsorption effectiveness. Meanwhile, the column filtration experiment indicated more than 60% of the organic matter can be removed by the carbon barrier within 2 hours filtration. The follow-up chlorination experiment illustrated that the formation of trihalomethanes (THMs) and haloacetic acids (HAAs) could be considerably prevented after filtration. Above all, the cost-effective carbon filtration technology developed in this study can potentially be applied as a pre-treatment technology for intake source waters for local communities.