Siti Khadijah Hubadillah, Mohd Hafiz Dzarfan Othman, AF Ismail, Mukhlis A Rahman, Juhana Jaafar
In this work, a low cost hydrophobic kaolin hollow fiber membranes (h-KHFM) was successfully prepared by phase inversion/sintering technique followed by a modification via grafting with fluoroalkylsilane (FAS) molecules. The influence of sintering temperature varied from 1200 to 1500 °C on the hydrophobization and separation performance of kaolin hollow fiber membrane (KHFM) was investigated through direct contact membrane distillation (DCMD) system towards synthetic arsenic wastewater. The results reveal that h-KHFM prepared at a sintering temperature of 1300° °C induced a high contact angle value of 145°, an excellent LEPw value of 2 bar, and an average pore size of 0.32 µm. As a consequence, a high permeate flux of 28 kg/m2 h for As(III) and 25 kg/m2 h for As(V) with 100% arsenic rejection was obtained at a feed temperature of 60 °C and has met the required standard of maximum …(read more)