THE PERFORMANCE OF REVERSE OSMOSIS MEMBRANE IN WATER TREATMENT

Abstract

Membrane technology has led to a new focus on water and wastewater treatment. This is due to several drawback of the conventional water treatment i.e release the toxic and carcinogenic materials. In this research, the use Reverse Osmosis (RO) membrane for treating river and well water to obtain clean and drinking water was studied. The variables studied were effect of pressure and operation time to the membrane flux. The pressure was varied from 1 to 7 bar and the operation time was varied from 15 to 60 minutes. The content of Total Dissolved Solid (TDS) in the permeate product was analyzed. The results shown that the increase of pressure would increase the membrane flux and decrease TDS. The increase of the operation time would decrease membrane flux and TDS. The reverse osmosis membrane was successfully applied to treat the river and well water. The product fulfill national standard quality of drinking water by viewpoint of the TDS content.