Analysis of membrane pore blocking model of ceramic and polymer ultrafiltration membranes for textile dyeing wastewater treatment

Textile industry effluent is a complicated blend of chemicals in varying amount and quality persistent to environmental effects. Membrane technology is considered as an adequate option for textile wastewater reclamation and treatment because it can selectively exclude contaminants from wastewater. Today, polymeric membranes are the most commercially used but ceramic membranes have several advantages over polymeric membranes such as thermal, chemical and mechanical stability. The main disadvantage of membranes in general is fouling which causes decrease in membrane performance. Thus it is important to predict the filtration performance of membranes in order to avoid irreversible damage and to allow the direct reuse of permeate in the manufacturing process. The aim of this work is to develop a membrane separation model for ultrafiltration based on experiments carried out with two commercial membranes: tubular multichannel ceramic membrane 1 kDa and polymer polyethersulphone flat sheet 1 kDa membrane.