The increasing contamination of water sources, particularly in rural and peri-urban areas of Vietnam, demands urgent, low-cost, and sustainable water treatment solutions, showing the importance of the application of advanced techniques in treating wastewater. This paper introduces an integrated water filtration process that combines reverse osmosis with biofiltration membranes enhanced with beneficial microbial agents, addressing existing limitations such as biofouling, high operational costs, and reduced membrane longevity. The system has four steps: pre-treatment by sedimentation and microbial inoculation; stratified bio-mechanical filtration; dual-stage disinfection using ozone and UV light; and sludge recycling to help recover resources. The multi-layered filter bed and counter-current flow design work together to remove contaminants as efficiently as possible, minimizing the clogging and keeping microbes working. The microbial formulation was shown to work in laboratory-scale tests. It contains high-density populations of functionally relevant strains like Nitrosomonas, Bacillus, and Actinobacteria, which are organisms that can break down ammonia, nitrates, phosphates, and other organic pollutants. While full-scale quantitative performance measures are still to come, early results show that essential contaminants that are usually present in shallow and surface water sources have been successfully reduced. The proposed model is a good option for communities that don't have centralized water infrastructure. It also supports the ideas of environmental biotechnology, the circular economy, and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, especially when it comes to getting clean water and managing resources in a way that lasts.
Nguyen et al. (Tue,) studied this question.
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