Separation and Purification Technology 104 (2013) 26–31

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Separation and Purification Technology

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/seppur

Car wash industry in Malaysia: Treatment of car wash effluent using

ultrafiltration and nanofiltration membranes
W.J. Lau ⇑, A.F. Ismail, S. Firdaus
Advanced Membrane Technology Research Centre (AMTEC), Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 81310 Skudai, Johor, Malaysia
Faculty of Petroleum and Renewable Energy Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 81310 Skudai, Johor, Malaysia

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Three different types of commercial membranes, i.e. UF PVDF100 (MWCO 100 kDa), UF PES30 (MWCO
Received 29 August 2012 30 kDa) and NF270 were used to treat car wash effluent and were evaluated with respect to permeate
Received in revised form 7 November 2012 flux, rejection of conductivity, total dissolved solid (TDS), chemical oxygen demand (COD) and turbidity.
Accepted 7 November 2012
Results revealed that NF270 exhibited greater flux stability and higher flux recovery during treatment
Available online 17 November 2012
process compared to PVDF100 and PES30 membranes, indicating its higher resistance against fouling.
With respect to turbidity removal, it is found that minimum rejection of 92% could be achieved irrespec-
Keywords:
tive of membrane properties and effluent characteristics. The performance of membrane in COD reduc-
Car wash effluent
Ultrafiltration
tion was however dependent on its properties in which NF270 showed the highest retention rate
Nanofiltration (70.9–91.5%) followed by PES30 (54.9–83.9%) and PVDF100 (56.1–82.4%). Compared to NF270, both UF
COD removal membranes were found ineffective in reducing conductivity and TDS of effluent. NF270 displayed at least
Turbidity 60% separation rate in conductivity and TDS removal compared to 13.6–35.4% reported in PVDF100 and
Conductivity PES30 membranes. The features demonstrated by NF270 in separating the pollutants from the car wash
effluent coupled with stable water production make the membrane a good candidate to be employed and
offer an environmentally sustainable option to car wash industry.
Ó 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
With the increasing awareness on environmental issues and
restricting environmental regulations on effluent discharged from
industries, it is undeniable that wastewater treatment plant is ur-
gently needed and should be installed prior to the point of dis-
charge. Membranes have been previously reported in the
literature to be useful in treating various kinds of industrial waste-
water such as textile dyeing effluent [1–3], oily water [4,5], muni-
cipal wastewater [6], wastewater from pulp and paper industry [7]
as well as poultry processing wastewater [8]. However, little atten-
tion is paid to the car wash industry. The phenomena can be re-
flected by the limited number of articles and technical papers
available in the open literature [9–14].
The biggest limitation to implementing car wash best manage-
ment practices may be the lack of knowledge regarding the im-
pacts of polluted runoff. It is generally perceived by public that
the wastewater from car washing is not severely contaminated
compared with other industrial wastewaters. It is reported that
many treatment methods such as coagulation, chemical oxidation,
absorption and filtration, are available to be employed in car wash
⇑ Corresponding author. Tel.: +60 75535926.
E-mail addresses: lwoeijye@utm.my, lau_woeijye@yahoo.com (W.J. Lau).
industry, but only insignificant car wash stations are equipped
with on-site wastewater treatment system. Based on our assess-
ment on the car wash effluent quality in Malaysia, it is found that
the quality of effluent with respect to chemical oxygen demand
(COD) is beyond the regulatory limit set by Malaysia government.
Table 1 shows the typical characteristics of car wash effluent in
Malaysia together with the standard discharged effluent. It must
be pointed out that many countries like Malaysia and Indonesia
have their own environmental quality regulations, but this partic-
ular regulation is seldom enforced to car wash industry. By taking
into account the huge quantity of water consumed per car and the
various chemical agents used in car wash industry, it is important
to treat the effluents properly before discharging into the environ-
ment. From a viewpoint of environmental protection and effective
utilization of water resources, initiative on water treatment should
be emphasized to deal with the problem. Otherwise, the car wash
effluent which contains a number of impurities such as sand and
dust, salt, oils, grease, organic matter, heavy metals and microor-
ganisms may go into stormwater system and eventually ending
up in our lakes, rivers and oceans [15]. The situation becomes even
worse with the mushrooming of the car wash stations in a town/
city.
According to the latest statistic of car industry in Malaysia (total
population: 28 million people), the total vehicles sales volume in
the first half of 2012 (between January and June) is 301,224 units

1383-5866/$ - see front matter Ó 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.seppur.2012.11.012
 W.J. Lau et al. / Separation and Purification Technology 104 (2013) 26–31 27

Table 1 Table 3
Typical car wash effluent characteristics and parameter limits of effluent (Standard A) Properties of ultrafiltration and nanofiltration membranes used in this work.
of environmental quality (Sewage and Industrial Effluents) regulation 1978. a b
Membrane Polymer Water MWCO/ Pure water
a
Parameter Car wash effluent Limits of effluent (Standard A) affinity Pore Size flux (l/m2 h)
Temperature (°C) 27.0–28.4 40 PVDF100 Polyvinylidene Hydrophobic 100 kDa/ 558.2
pH value 6.51–8.74 6.0–9.0 difluoride 0.04 lm
BOD5 (mg/l) 10.5–11.9 20 PES30 Polyethersulfone Hydrophilic 30 kDa/ 264.8
COD (mg/l) 75.0–738.0 50 0.02 lm
Turbidity (NTU) 34.7–86.0 N/A NF270 Polyamide Highly 300 Da/ 58.5
TDS (mg/l) 89.2–151.8 N/A hydrophilic 1 nm
Conductivity (lS/m) 150.7–260.7 N/A a
Pore size corresponds to MWCO is determined using filtration and separation
a
The range of value shown is obtained from five different car wash stations in spectrum provided by GE Power & Water [19].
b
Taman Universiti (Skudai district, Johor). Pure water flux of membrane is determined at operating pressure of 3 bar.

and is forecasted to hit a new record of a total of 615,000 units at
the end of 2012 compared to 605,156 units and 600,123 units in
2010 and 2011, respectively [16]. The increase in car volume on
the road together with the existing number of cars would defi-
nitely further boost the car wash industry, leading to increase in
car wash service, particularly in high population of residential area
located in urban areas. Depending on the type of car wash installa-
tion and the size of a car, it is reported that an average of 150–600 l
wastewater is produced from every car of washing [13,17]. Taking
into account the huge quantities of effluent generated and its com-
plex composition, installation of a wastewater treatment system is
not just a process to cope with the environmental problem to meet
the environmental discharge requirements but also is a step to re-
cover valuable rinsed water for reuse purpose, aiming to create a
sustainable solution in this industry. Examples show that in
Queensland, Australia and some countries in Europe, it is restricted
to use less than 70 l of fresh water in single car wash and/or impose
water reclamation percentage [10,18].
The main objective of this work is to investigate the feasibility
of using membranes for the treatment of car wash effluent. With
the use of car wash effluent produced from two different car wash
stations, ultrafiltration (30 kDa and 100 kDa) and nanofiltration
(300 Da) membranes will be evaluated with respect to water flux
and rejection of conductivity, total dissolved solid (TDS), COD
and turbidity. Physical backflushing cleaning will also be per-
formed on membrane in order to retrieve its flux in the most eco-
nomic way. It is expected that the outcomes of this study can
provide instructive information on the ideal properties of mem-
branes that can be used for car wash effluent treatment process
and the possibility of reusing treated water in the same industry.
2. Experimental
2.2. UF/NF membranes and filtration experiments
In this study, three types of membranes were used for the treat-
ment of car wash effluent. These membranes were purchased from
two different manufacturers in which NF270 membrane was ob-
tained from DOWFILMTECTM while polyethersulfone membrane
of 30 kDa (PES30) and polyvinylidene difluoride membrane of
100 kDa (PVDF100) were obtained from Amfor Inc. The properties
of these membranes are shown in Table 3. Prior to the permeation
tests, all the membranes with effective area of 14.6 cm2 each were
compacted at pressure of 5 bar for at least 30 min to achieve stea-
dy-state flux. Fig. 1 illustrates a lab-scale cross-flow filtration unit
used for all filtration experiments. The filtration unit was equipped
with a 5 l feed storage tank and a booster pump (Brand: Deng
Yuan, Model: TYP – 2000) that could generate pressure up to 80
psi and maximum feed flow rate of 2.2 l/min. Desired value of
operating pressure was controlled by manipulating the flow rate
of retentate stream using Alloy 400 integral-bonnet needle valve
(Swagelok).
The permeate flux of membrane, J (l/m2 h) at different pressures
can be determined using the equation as follows.
Q
J¼ ð1Þ
At
where Q is quantity of permeate (l), A is effective membrane area
(m2) and t is time to obtain the quantity of Q (h).
To assess the separation efficiency of membrane against each
parameter, the rejection rate, R (%) is used and can be calculated
according to the formula:
 
Cp
R¼ 1  100 ð2Þ
Cf

2.1. Car wash effluents P

Feed Stream Retentate Stream

Car wash effluents collected from two different car wash sta- Permeation Cell
tions, namely Sin Huat car wash (coordinate: 1.539596oN
103.628102oE) and SCS car wash (coordinate: 1.542781oN
103.63237oE) in Taman Universiti (Skudai district) were character-
ized with respect to COD, TDS, conductivity and turbidity. The Flow Meter 1
V-4
characteristics of both effluents are shown in Table 2 in which Permeate Stream
Sin Huat car wash effluent displayed very high COD content com-
pared to sample collected from SCS car wash station.
V-2 V-3

Table 2
Characteristics of car wash effluent collected from two different car wash stations.

Parameter Effluent A Sin Huat station Effluent B SCS station

V-1
COD (mg/l) 738 174 Feed Storage
Turbidity (NTU) 68.9 62.8 Pump 1
TDS (mg/l) 89.5 117.0
Conductivity (lS/m) 138.8 177.5 Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of cross-flow membrane filtration unit (On–off valve: V-
1, V-2 and V-3, Needle valve: V-4).
28 W.J. Lau et al. / Separation and Purification Technology 104 (2013) 26–31
where Cp and Cf are the concentration of permeate and feed sample,
respectively.
2.3. Analytical methods
Analysis on the COD concentration of the feed and permeate
samples was performed using Hach Spectrophotometer (Model:
DR 5000) by following the procedures handbook provided. The re-
moval efficiencies of the membranes for conductivity and TDS
were determined using a portable conductivity meter (Model:
EC300, YSI Inc). Characterization on the sample quality with re-
spect to turbidity was conducted using a portable Hach Turbidim-
eter (Model: 2100Q). Inductively coupled plasma mass
spectrometry (Model: ELAN 6000, Perkin Elmer) was used to per-
form elemental analysis on certain ions present in the car wash
effluent.
3. Results and discussion
3.1. Membrane water flux
Fig. 2 shows the trend of the membrane water flux with time
during the car wash effluent treatment for two different wastewa-
ter characteristics. Compared to PES30 (except in Fig. 2a) and
PVDF100 membranes, results clearly indicated that NF270 demon-
strated better flux stability during wastewater treatment, record-
ing <15% and <10% flux reduction (within the studied period)
during treatment process of Sin Huat effluent and SCS effluent,
respectively. The insignificant flux decline of NF270 can be atttrib-
uted to its highly hydrophilic selective surface established from the
reaction between two active mononers – piperazine and benzene-
tricarbonyl trichloride. In addition to the hydrophilic layer, the
highly negatively charged surface of NF270 also played important
role in diminishing fouling effect, avoiding significant flux deterio-
ration in wastewater treatment process [20]. Nevertheless, as can
be seen in Fig. 2a, the flux stability of PES30 was very similar or
Fig. 2. Normalized water flux of membranes operated at pressure of 3 bars, (a) Sin
Huat car wash effluent and (b) SCS car wash effluent.
even better than NF270. It is possibly due to the presence of hydro-
philic foulants in the Sin Huat car wash effluent, resulting in NF270
being fouled and reducing its water permeation rate. This behavior
of flux stability is worthy of further investigation.
In the treatment of Sin Huat car wash effluent, it is found that
PVDF100 suffered severe flux decline in which its water flux
dropped remarkably (>60%) after a very short operation period.
Similar trend was also observed when the membrane was used
for treating car wash effluent discharged from another service sta-
tion. The significant flux reduction of PVDF100 can be explained by
the fact that its hydrophobic surface is very susceptible to foulant
attachment which forms an additional resistance for water mole-
cules to pass through. The foulant attachement on PVDF100 can
be strongly linked to the oil and grease in a car wash which could
come from any of the petroleum products on the surface of vehicle
or leaking from the engine. Generally, the composition of oil and
grease is very complex and might contain lot of hazardous materi-
als such as benzene, lead, zinc, chromium, arsenic, pesticides, ni-
trates, and other metals in different unit of concentration.
3.2. Separation efficiency of membrane
Figs. 3–5 present the separation efficiency of three different
types of membranes for car wash effluent treatment. Since many
factors (e.g. car wash station, type of chemical used, washing per-
iod, etc.) can affect the characteristics of car wash effluent studied,
two different samples with significant COD difference were col-
lected from different car wash stations with the aim of covering
the possible range of COD value of the effluent. The COD value of
effluent discharged is a big concern to many since it is one of the
important parameters listed in Malaysian regulations. As can be
clearly seen from these figures, it is found that all the membranes
demonstrated excellent turbidity removal (at least 92%) regardless
of the membrane pore structure and sample characteristics. The
highest turbidity rejection recorded (98.8%) in this study was hap-
pened in NF270 for SCS car wash effluent. High rejection rate of
turbidity can be attributed to the relatively large particle size of
pollutants e.g. dirt, mud and brake dust that are washed off from
vehicles compared to the membrane pore size. Principally, it can
be concluded that turbidity separation in car wash effluent is
mainly governed by sieving mechanism due to steric hindrance.
Other effects such as membrane hydrophilicity/hydrophobicity
and surface charge only contribute little or none to the separation.
With respect to COD retention, the results revealed that UF
membranes did not reduce the COD in the permeate to the level
demanded by environmental authorities. PVDF100 membranes
achieved between 56.1% and 82.4% COD retention while PES30
showed between 54.9% and 83.9% rejection when they were used
to treat wastewater of different feed COD concentrations. Though
NF270 membrane exhibited greater COD retention for both types
of wastewater, it was still not very easy to meet the national
COD standard of 50 mg/l. With the COD retention of 91.5% for Sin
Huat effluent and 70.9% for SCS effluent, the COD value in the per-
meate of NF270 was 62.7 mg/L and 50.6 mg/L, respectively. In
comparison to the work conducted by Jönsson and Jönsson [14]
where only 60% COD retention was achieved by commercial NF
of AFC30 and AFC40 in treating car wash effluent of around
1250 mg COD/L, it is reported that NF270 used in this study
showed better performance in treating car wash effluent, though
the wastewater characteristics were different between these two
studies. As reported by Pak and Chang [21], COD was mostly orig-
inated from the use of detergent and dirt from car wash. To pro-
mote best practise within car wash industry, it is highly
recommended to minimise water used for each car washing and
use only biodegradable cleaners.
 W.J. Lau et al. / Separation and Purification Technology 104 (2013) 26–31 29

Fig. 3. Separation efficiency of PVDF100 membranes operated at pressure of 3 bars, (a) Sin Huat car wash effluent and (b) SCS car wash effluent.

Fig. 4. Separation efficiency of PES30 membranes operated at pressure of 3 bars, (a) Sin Huat car wash effluent and (b) SCS car wash effluent.

Fig. 5. Separation effiency of NF270 membranes operated at pressure of 3 bars, (a) Sin Huat car wash effluent and (b) SCS car wash effluent.

Table 4
Table 5
Concentration of specific ion in car wash effluent together with its Stokes’ law radii
Average flux recovery of membrane after a 30 min backflushing.
[23,24] and AW.
a
Membrane Pressure Initial PWF after Flux Average
Solute AW Stokes radius (nm) Concentration (ppm)
(bar) PWF (l/ backflushing recovery flux
Sin Huat effluent SCS effluent m2 h) (l/m2 h) (%) recovery
Na +
23 0.184 156.20 35.25 (%)
K+ 39.1 0.125 5.62 56.78 PVDF100 1 377.4 128.8 34.1
Mg2+ 24.3 0.348 1.54 18.14 2 422.4 151.6 35.9
Ca2+ 40 0.310 3.30 39.10 3 558.2 161.6 29.0 30.8
Cu2+ 63.5 0.325 0.04 0.04 4 628.3 173.5 27.6 (±3.9)
5 659.4 181.7 27.6
PES30 1 118.9 63.0 53.0
2 198.2 97.7 49.3
3 264.8 127.9 48.3 50.1
The performance of membranes in reducing conductivity and
4 300.9 157.1 52.2 (±2.4)
TDS was greatly dependent on the membrane pore size and surface 5 340.0 161.6 47.5
charge property. It is generally known that UF is not effective in
NF270 1 20.5 20.6 100.0
reducing conductivity and TDS compared to polyamide NF which 2 36.3 32.0 88.1
possesses nano-scale pore size coupled with negative surface 3 58.5 52.1 89.1 88.3
charge [22]. In this study, it is experienced that both UF mem- 4 88.2 66.7 75.6 (±8.7)
5 98.6 87.7 88.9
branes showed a significantly lower conductivity and TDS rejection
than that seen in NF membrane. With respect to conductivity a
These data were the average value of flux recovery together with their standard
reduction, NF270 demonstrated a very reasonable rejection rate deviation.
30 W.J. Lau et al. / Separation and Purification Technology 104 (2013) 26–31
Fig. 6. Direct observation on the active surface of membranes after backflushing process, (a) PVDF100, (b) PES30 and (c) NF270.
(61.9–63.6%) followed by PES30 (23.6–35.4%) and PVDF100 (16.9–
19.6%). Similar trend was also observed in TDS reduction in which
NF membrane performed better than that of UF membranes. Fur-
ther analysis on the wastewater characteristics revealed the pres-
ence of various ions (both monovalent and divalent) in different
concentrations in the car wash effluent (Table 4). As can be seen,
the wastewater also carried trace amount of heavy metal–copper
(around 40 ppb) which is normally found in brake dust. Detailed
investigation on the heavy metal removal using membrane how-
ever was not performed as a part of this study as the content of
heavy metal in the effluent was extremely small. Owing to the
presence of monovalent ions, there is a reason to believe that com-
plete elimination of conductivity is very challenging to achieve
with the use of either UF or NF membrane, unless RO is adopted
as treatment process. Though NF membrane in this work could
not eliminate completely the conductivity/TDS, its promising per-
formance in COD and turbidity reduction could meet the regula-
tory demand for discharge and offer alternative option for
reusing the water in the same industry. Further investigation on
how the treated water with low conductivity/TDS may affect the
effectiveness of car wash process is highly needed in order to con-
vince the industry for this technology adoption.
3.3. Membrane flux recovery
For better understanding of the effect of physical cleaning pro-
cess on the membrane flux recovery, each membrane sample was
subjected to 30 min backflushing using DI water at pressure of 3
bars. After backflushing process, the pure water flux of three used
membranes (from Sin Huat effluent treatment) was determined at
pressure of 1–5 bar and the values obtained were compared with
their initial pure water flux in order to obtain the average flux
recovery percentage as shown in Table 5. Chemical cleaning pro-
cess on the other hand can also be performed to retrieve mem-
brane water flux, but it should only be considered if physical
cleaning process is found ineffective in flux recovery. The main
drawback of chemical cleaning process is alteration of membrane
properties, leading to undesirable damage to membrane in long
run.
As can be seen from Table 5, it is found that physical backflu-
shing process was ineffective in retrieving water flux of PVDF100
and PES30 membranes. Results revealed that PVDF100 displayed
the lowest flux recovery (around 30%) among the membranes stud-
ied, indicating its low sustainability in car wash effluent treatment.
Hydrophilic PES30 on the other hand demonstrated better flux
recovery rate (around 50%) compared with PVDF100, but was still
not good enough for industrial adoption. Results showed that only
NF270 could achieve promising result, recovering close to 90% of
the membrane flux. The excellent flux recovery rate coupled with
highest separation rate make NF270 a good candidate for car wash
industry.
Fig. 6 presents the images of membrane top active surface after
backflushing process. It is found that the physical appearance of
these membrane surfaces were in good agreement with the flux
recovery rate. Of the three membranes examined, NF270 was less
stained compared to PES30 and PVDF100 membranes. Physically,
the surface of NF270 after backflushing was very similar to its vir-
gin state, revealing the flux decline during treatment process was
mainly due to concentration polarization effect. The lowest flux
recovery rate of PVDF100 could be linked to its stained surface as
a result of significant foulant attachement. In view of this, it can
be said that hydrophobic membrane is not suitable in car wash
effluent treatment process due to its significant flux deterioration
and low flux recovery rate in comparison to hydrophilic mem-
branes studied in this work.
4. Conclusions
Three different types of polymeric membranes with different
properties were used in this work for car wash effluent treatment
process. Based on these findings obtained, it is showed that NF
membrane is more suitable and reliable to be used in car wash
industry compared to UF membrane. The features demonstrated
by NF270 in separating the pollutants from the car wash effluent
at a relatively low operating pressure (3 bar) coupled with stable
water production can offer an environmentally sustainable option
to car wash industry, i.e. meeting regulatory requirements for dis-
charge and reducing fresh water consumption from water reclama-
tion. In addition to this, close to 90% of the water flux of NF270
could be easily retrieved by a simple backflushing process, indicat-
ing polyamide NF membrane is highly resistant to the foulants
present in car wash effluent.
Acknowledgement
The authors are grateful for the research grant provided by Uni-
versiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) under Research University Grant
Scheme (Vot No. Q.J130000.7142.01H40).
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