Model of fouling mechanism in ultrafiltration and micellar-enhanced ultrafiltration membrane for reactive dye removal

Modification of ultrafiltration membrane named micellar-enhanced ultrafiltration (MEUF) membrane was developed to remove Remazol reactive dyes from its solution. The surfactant at a concentration higher than its critical micelle concentration (CMC) is added in the feed phase of the ultrafiltration membrane generating micelles from assembling and aggregating of surfactant monomer. The micelles have a hydrodynamic diameter greater than that of membrane pores and can entrap small solutes such as dyes. Remazol dye in its solution was removed by ultrafiltration and MEUF. It was confirmed that the MEUF was able to reject dye solute with greater effectiveness than the Ultrafiltration. Maximum dye rejection by ultrafiltration was only 94.6%, however, by implementing the MEUF, dye rejection increased to 98.3%. In addition, this research investigated fouling mechanism occurring in both ultrafiltration and MEUF membrane for remazol dye removal. The fouling mechanism was determined based on Hermia's blocking model. Determination of fouling mechanism by blocking Hermia's model confirmed that the dominated blocking mechanism for both ultrafiltration and MEUF was cake/gel formation.