Ultrafiltration membrane fouling and cleaning: A case study in hutan lipur perangin sik,Kedah

Membrane technology is being widely applied all over the world in various field including biotechnology,pharmacy,food,drinking water production,wastewater treatment and many more. however,instead of the advantages in membrane separation,there are still limitations in the application such as flux decline due to membrane fouling which results in lower production and higher energy consumption to maintain the flux. membrane fouling has been one of the main challenges when the rejected particles accumulated on the membrane surface or inside the pores. membrane cleaning is necessary to minimize fouling effect to the membrane. this current study aims to determine the dominant fouling mechanism in ultrafiltration treatment of raw surface water which was conducted in hutan lipur perangin sik,kedah. from the experimental data and model prediction fitting curve,cake formation has been found as the dominant fouling mechanism. physical and chemical cleaning has been done to confirm the fouling type and minimize membrane fouling. backwashing was chosen for physical cleaning varying different backwash pressure while five types of chemical cleaning agents have been used. it has been concluded that backwashing at 2 bar for 0.5 minutes is the appropriate method which can recover the permeate flux up to 82.96% recovery compared to chemical cleaning. © school of engineering,taylor’s university.