TiO2-enabled polyvynylidene fluoride for palm oil mill effluent treatment: effects of membrane morphology and aeration on flux and suspended solid removal

A polyvinylidene fluoride-based mixed matrix membrane (PVDF-MMM) has been developed to treat palm oil mill effluent (POME). The addition of TiO2 into PVDF membrane was conducted. Hollow fibers were spun from a dope solution containing PVDF/PVP 30K/DMAc/additives by using a dry-jet wet spinning process at different air gaps. AFM image demonstrated that wet spun hollow fiber had a rougher outer surface than that of dry-jet wet spun fibers and exhibited symmetric cross-section structure. Experimental results showed that hydrophilicity of membranes increased with adding of TiO2 particles and the varied air gap length influenced the characteristic of membrane pore size and outer membrane surface roughness. In addition, aeration could increase the turbulence and flux and reduce membrane fouling. The values of flux and suspended solids removal were 92.04 L/m2.hr and 94.86 %, respectively, with the varied aeration flow rate of 2.0, 3.0 and 4.0 mL/min and bubble size distribution of 4.0 µm. Overall, this study has proven that PVDF-based MMM could achieve expected performance for POME treatment