Progress, challenges, and opportunities in enhancing NOM flocculation using chemically modified chitosan: a review towards future development

Abstract

Natural organic matter (NOM) occurs ubiquitously in water bodies and this can greatly affect feed or raw water quality (taste, colour, odour, bacterial growth). Furthermore, it reduces the performance of the coagulation-based water treatment process. Because the NOM content and its chemical complexity are increasing throughout the world, the removal of NOM from water has become a major challenge in supplying the required amounts of good quality water. The coagulation–flocculation process is widely used for purifying urban water supplies. However, it is not always sufficiently successful in removing the augmented NOM in the feed water, mostly because the polyelectrolytes currently used as coagulants/flocculants cannot effectively interact with all the NOM components consisting of different functional groups, molecular weights, charges, and hydrophobicity. Within the class of polyelectrolytes, chitosan (Cs), which is produced by the deacetylation of abundantly available chitin, has been tested in removing NOM. The effectiveness of Cs can be further improved by chemically modifying the abundant free amino and hydroxyl groups along the Cs chain backbone. This will provide new functional groups that can increase the positive charges, molecular weight, and allow for solubility over a wider pH range, as well as introduce tailored groups which interact in an optimised way with NOM, thereby reducing the solubility of the formed complexes. This paper critically reviews the chemistry of the formed polyelectrolyte/NOM complexes and provides information on how this can be taken advantage of, to identify modified chemical structures of Cs to improve NOM removal in water treatment strategies.