The used of additive enhance the surface of the membrane layer and can be choose from various material. Examples of commonly used additive in membrane are Polyethylene glycol, silica oxide, cellulose acetate and Polyvinylpyrrolidone. Silica oxide was proven have ability to minimize the fouling problem hence increase hydrophobic properties of membrane. Silica also can be extracted from rice husk ash, sugarcane bagasse, sorghum vularae seed and kenaf by precipitation method, biodigestion and sol-gel process. Silica extraction from sugarcane bagasse was chosen as the organic additive for membrane formation. In order to investigate the suitability of the material, several characterization test have been conducted. There are thermal, microscopic and spectroscopic analyses. Thermal gravimetric analysis was performed on sugarcane bagasse to determine the amount of silica that can be extracted from it. Results of TGA on sugarcane bagasse show that the peak temperature at 315.70 °C are defined as crystalline melt. After the melt transition, the baseline takings to a slightly lower position than the pre-melt baseline. The post-melt baseline changes slope as the sample begins decomposition while TGA extrapolated onset temperature of 241.56 °C as this sample decomposes. The analysis of microscopic shows that the addition of silica from sugarcane bagasse changed the surface structure of the membrane especially at top layer and sub layer. Sugarcane bagasse show bands for carboxylate (COO-) and hydroxyl (OH-) groups. The availability of negatively charged groups at the surface of sugarcane bagasse shows potential to be used as additive in membrane fabrication.

Membrane has been used widely in developed countries and most of researchers focus on the development of membrane formulation. However, different materials with different portion give a various effects on the membrane morphology and performances. Hence, blend polymer is one of the method that can be explored to produce the best membrane performance. This present study aims to identify an ideal formulation of blend polymers in membrane fabrication process. Dope solution was prepared using these materials; cellulose acetate (CA) and polysulfone (PSf) are blended together as polymer, N,N-Dimethylacetamide (DMAc) as solvent and Polyvinylpyrrolidone as an additive in membrane fabrication. Best formula for blended polymer was tested on the performance test; salt rejection, flux of salt and Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscopic (FESEM).

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The waste from the kenaf water retting; kenaf core can be used to create by-product. The characteristics of the kenaf are important to create new by-product. Cellulosic materials can be obtained from fibrous plants which known as cellulose, hemicelluloses, lignin, waxes, and several water-soluble compounds. Kenaf was categorized as one of the fibrous family plants. Hence, its cellulosic materials need to be determined before extraction process. This research was conducted to determine the cellulosic materials concentration in kenaf core using Thermal Gravimetry Analyzer (TGA) and Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC). As result, the percentage of degradation and decomposition of cellulosic materials were recorded and analyzed as reported in this paper.

Water retting is the main challenge faced during the processing of bast kenaf plants. This conventional method has been reported to generate much water pollution. A lab-scale experiment was performed using two different polysulfone membranes to investigate the effect of additive towards the permeability performance and nutrients reclamation efficiency of kenaf retted wastewater. From the experiment, it may be concluded that polysulfone membrane with 10wt.% of polyvinyl-pyrrolidone concentration can be used effectively to reclaimed nutrients. Tests with polysulfone membrane without additive achieved more than 75% and a polysulfone membrane with 10% additive practically reclaimed more than 85% of nutrients from kenaf retted wastewater. Nutrients analysis indicated that total nitrogen, total phosphorus and pottasium could be reclaimed and can be reuse as liquid fertilizer.