Membrane filtration processes like microfiltration (MF) and ultrafiltration (UF) are proven to be effective in industrial wastewater treatment, including oil-water separation, as they generate suitable quality permeate for water reuse applications. Various research efforts have been conducted in areas of developing and/or modifying commercial MF/UF membrane materials through synthesizing new advanced polymers that promise improvement in oil-water separation performance. Although multiple MF/UF testing procedures were developed, there is still a gap in literature on having a comprehensive protocol that assesses the performance of the membranes in terms of flux, rejection, fouling, and cleanability. This paper delivers a robust bench scale testing procedure incorporating experiences and lessons learned from literature. The evaluation procedure includes three main testing steps: initial characterization, operating performance, and cleaning and recovery. The protocol was designed to mimic industrial conditions by using a representative synthetic produced water solution and operating multiple consecutives cycles of oil-water filtration followed by membrane chemical cleaning. The procedure was initially validated on multiple commercial MF/UF membranes having different pore sizes/MWCOs and chemistries obtained from various manufacturers and then applied to evaluate emerging membrane materials. The protocol was found to be reliable in evaluating the performance trends of various commercial membranes and effective in comparing the performance of emerging membranes. The developed procedure is proposed to be applied by researchers to assess the performance of new membrane materials as compared to relevant commercial products.

事实证明，微滤 (MF) 和超滤 (UF) 等膜过滤工艺在工业废水处理（包括油水分离）中是有效的，因为它们可以产生适合水再利用应用的优质渗透液。通过合成有望提高油水分离性能的新型先进聚合物，在开发和/或改进商业 MF/UF 膜材料的领域进行了各种研究工作。尽管开发了多种 MF/UF 测试程序，但文献中仍然存在一个空白，即有一个全面的协议来评估膜在通量、截留、污染和可清洁性方面的性能。本文提供了一个强大的小规模测试程序，结合了从文献中吸取的经验和教训。评估程序包括三个主要测试步骤：初始表征、操作性能以及清洁和恢复。该协议旨在通过使用具有代表性的合成生产水溶液并运行多个连续的油水过滤循环，然后进行膜化学清洗来模拟工业条件。该程序最初在从不同制造商获得的具有不同孔径/MWCO 和化学成分的多种商业 MF/UF 膜上进行了验证，然后应用于评估新兴的膜材料。发现该协议在评估各种商业膜的性能趋势方面是可靠的，并且在比较新兴膜的性能方面是有效的。