Effect of bore fluid composition on structural and performance of polyphenylsulfone hollow fiber membrane contactor for deacdification of crude palm oil

Abstract

The present work is aimed to study the influence of membrane internal structure on the extracting performance of hollow fiber membrane contactor system in removing free fatty acid (FFA) from crude palm oil (CPO). Polyphenylsulfone (PPSU) hollow fiber membrane were prepared via wet spinning method. Different bore fluid composition were employed mainly consisted of distilled water in combination with 0, 20, 30 and 40 wt.% N-methyl-2pyrrolidone (NMP). The resulting membranes structure were characterized for membrane morphology, membrane wettability and membrane pore size. The used of pure distilled water as membrane BF had created a large macrovoid structure with uniform and tiny finger-liked morphology at the outer membrane layer. Meanwhile, the present of NMP in BF composition had obviously changed the internal layer of 14PPSU membrane to more interconnected double-layers of finger-liked morphology. However, there are not much different in membrane wettability and pore size of 14PPSU membrane were recorded. All PPSU hollow fiber membranes were further evaluated for deacidification performance through membrane contactor with sodium hydroxide (NaOH) as liquid extractant. 14PPSU-100:0 membrane contactor that prepared from100% distilled water as BF composition demonstrated the highest FFA removal of 16.54% without soap formation in oil permeate stream.