ABSTRACT

Wastewater treatment has become a pressing challenge due to the generation of its large amount by daily life usage and industrial processes. To this regard, membrane technology has been a household name for such treatment. In this work, three inorganic additives, namely silicon dioxide (SiO₂), titanium oxide (TiO₂) and zinc oxide (ZnO) were selected and blended with polyethersulfone (PES) to prepare a PES-composite membrane using the phase inversion technique. The effects of various inorganic additives on performance of as-membranes for oil water emulsion separation were evaluated via the cross-flow ultrafiltration process. Membranes embedded with TiO₂ nanoparticles (NPs) presents the highest permeate flux and pure water flux of 7.95 kg m^-2 h^-1 and 21.68 kg m^-2 h^-1, respectively. Furthermore, it also presents the lowest fouling phenomenon among the membranes with relative flux reduction and flux recovery ratio of 63.33% and 48.57%, respectively.

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