Water treatment using ultrasonic assistance: A review

Abstract

One of innovate techniques that was used for improvement of water treatment process is application of ultrasound waves. In this study, different applications of ultrasound technology in water treatment process such as membrane filtration, turbidity and total suspended solid reduction, algae removal, disinfection process, water softening process and other pollutants removal such as halomethanes and DDT were surveyed. The results show this technique could improve the water treatment process environmentally. The various parameters could affect to the efficiency of ultrasound technique such as power density, frequency and irradiation time. So it is needed to obtain the optimum power density, frequency and irradiation time to reach cost-effective. The most experiments are carried out in laboratory scale due to its cost. The utilization of solar energy may help to decrease the cost. It is suggested that the ultrasound technique could be extended to clean up of other polluted parameters in water and the environment.