4. Conclusion
As the wastewater from rubber industry is contaminated
with a complex set of oxygen demanding materials, its
discharge to environment must comply with the local
regulations. MD is found to be a feasible process for rubber
wastewater treatment which allows production of high purity
water. Major findings of this work include the significant
reduction of several important parameters in rubber
processing effluent i.e. TOC, TDS, conductivity, sulphate,
colour and turbidity to a very low level of concentration.
Although MD demonstrated excellent performance in
producing treated water of high quality, its water production
rate was deteriorated against the operation time, owing to the
severe fouling problem. The main reason of this severe flux
decline is due to the presence of complex components e.g.
latex and protein in the rubber effluent, which plays a role
blocking/covering the pore of membrane and further decrease
the evaporation area. Other possible explanation for this
phenomenon includes the concentration and thermal
polarization effect in the DCMD process.