Simultaneous clarification and dehydration of crude palm oil using superhydrophobic polypropylene membrane

Abstract Clarification and dehydration processes are generally employed to produce high-quality crude palm oil (CPO). In this work, superhydrophobic hollow fiber polypropylene (PP) membrane is used to perform a simultaneous clarification and dehydration. The effect of transmembrane pressure (TMP), temperature, and water content on the membrane performance are investigated. Results indicate that the permeate flux was increased with the increase of TMP and temperature. However, the permeate flux was decreased with the increase of water content. Meanwhile, the water removal was slightly affected by those parameters. The superhydrophobic PP membrane can produce CPO with 59% non-dissolved solid removal, >99% water removal, and 47% clarity improvement (at 40 °C and 2 bar TMP). In addition, it was found that the fouling mechanism was dominated by cake filtration. Air scouring could be effectively used to recover the membrane flux with a flux recovery ratio of 90% (backflush duration = 5 min, filtration cycle = 2).