Variation of membrane’s thickness : the effect of membrane’s performance on Copper (II) Ion

The purposes of this study are to characterize the industrial wastewater containing Copper (II) ion and to evaluate the performance of Composite membranes on the removal of Copper (II) ion. The integrated complexation method is used as its benefit is to overcome the restrictions of the existing methods in removing the heavy metal ions. For the characterization of wastewater, the result has shown that the water samples need to undergo further treatment before being discharged to the groundwater as the analysis results are out of the acceptable range of Environmental Quality (Industrial Effluent) Regulations 2009. Before performing the performance testing, the pH of the water sample was altered to 7 as the pre-treatment. Two types of composite membrane with i) A polymer blend of PVA and Chitosan as thin layer and ii) Hybrid membrane as thin layer, of thickness 60µm and 90µm were used. The final result shows that Composite membrane with Hybrid membrane as thin layer of 90µm was the best membrane to be used to filter the water sample with the removal percentage of 99.67%. Besides that, it has fulfilled the Environmental Act’s requirement which the copper ion concentration need to be less than 1ppm