ABSTRACT
During rice processing, a significant amount of husks is produced. Cellulose is one of the main components of husks and may be used to produce flat membranes through acetylation, for desalination processes. In this chapter membranes were produced from rice husks, with and without the addition of cross-linking agents (oxalic acid and glutaraldehyde), and permeation experiments were performed to evaluate the salt retention by the membranes. Best results were achieved when a membrane cross-linked with 8.8 wt.% oxalic acid was used. This works encourages further studies in the application of rice husks based membranes on separation processes such as reverse osmosis.
