NaClO-based rapid sand filter in treating manganese-containing surface water: Fast ripening and mechanism

Recently, seasonal manganese contamination in the surface water is capturing ever-increasing attention and has posed significant challenges to the safety of water supply in the conventional drinking water treatment plants. This study aimed to develop new strategies to enhance the manganese removal by the sand filter. The synergistic effects of filter material type, filter layer thickness, filtration rate, and NaClO addition on the manganese removal performance, were systematically investigated. The results indicated that modified zeolite exerted the highest adsorption capacity (5.200 mg/g) for manganese. Introducing the NaClO oxidation would effectively improve the manganese removal efficiency (from 32 % to 97 %) by the modified zeolite filter compared to the control system at the filtration rate of 8 m/h, owing to the fast formation of catalytic oxidation capability. Accordingly, the effective layer thickness of modified zeolite can be shortened from 100 cm to 10–20 cm to engineer a double-layer filter consisting of both a thin modified zeolite layer and a thick natural quartz sand layer. Besides, NaClO involvement would neutralize the adverse effects of manganese removal caused by the filtration rate increase, and facilitate the formation of auto-catalytic manganese oxides (MnOx) with rough, heterogeneous, and porous surface morphology, as well as numerous tremella-like and sponge-type structures, which was related to the fast removal of manganese. These findings are full of significance in developing simple, practical, and cost-effective strategies for seasonal manganese contamination.