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A multicontinuum model is built to estimate the permeate flux of an oily water system across a thin flat membrane in cross filtration methodology is demonstrated. Several continua are constructed to represent droplet and pore‐size distribution of both the dispersed oil phase and the porous membrane, respectively. The possible permeation of the oil phase has been divided into three criteria. In the first criterion, oil droplets of a given size range may permeate through a given size range of the porous membrane, in the second criterion, oil droplets of another size range may be rejected through another pore size range, and in the third criterion, oil droplets may break apart leaving a tail inside the pore space, which will eventually permeate, and the rest will sweep off due to shear stress. These protocols identify the methodology of the proposed multicontinuum approach, which is introduced in this first part. © 2017 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 63: 4604–4615, 2017

In this second part, a validation exercise is conducted to investigate the accuracy of the multicontinuum approach in estimating the permeation capacity of membranes used for the filtration of oily‐water systems. Comparisons with the experimental works found in the literature reveals that the multicontinuum approach is quite accurate and show excellent match. Although the comparisons with the experimental data have been with respect to macroscopic integral variables, like the rejection capacity of membranes, the multicontinuum approach provides myriad information about the permeation process that have neither been presented nor even measured. Such detailed information has been highlighted in two examples. Details about which of the oil continua is going to be rejected or permeated through which porous membrane continuum are obtained. Furthermore, the flux of each oil continuum through every porous membrane continua is likewise obtained. These informations are then lumped to calculate the rejection capacity of membranes. © 2017 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 64: 1095–1105, 2018

This work is an experimental investigation of the effects of the operating conditions on the performance of a novel titanium‐based ceramic ultrafiltration membrane used to treat field produced water. To design the experiments and optimize the operating conditions, the Taguchi method was used to predict the optimal operating conditions. Under optimal conditions, an almost oil free permeation is obtained (98.93%) along with the removal of more than 99% for the total organic carbon (TOC), a high turbidity removal (99.82%) and a good salinity rejection for a UF membrane. The membrane was capable of treating a high steady flux of 441 L/m2 h with an overall flux decay of 28.6%. The Hermia’s cake formation model fitted the flux declining behaviour better than the three other associated models. Finally, four different techniques based on artificial intelligence (AI) methods were used to fit the flux declining behaviour. They seem to outperform the simple Hermiaˊs model for the modelling of oily water filtration.