The presence of impurities in the bioethanol fermentation broth should be removed to mitigate any possible ineffective refining processes as well as to enhance bioethanol production. In this study

a pre-filtration process was carried out for separating fermentation yeast cells and residual substrates using a microfiltration membrane. Hydrophilic polyvinylidene fluoride-graphene oxide/titanium dioxide (PVDF-GO/TiO

2

) membrane with polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) surface-coating modification was fabricated and characterized. Membrane modification attempts have succeeded in increasing the hydrophilicity as indicated by contact angle decline from 72.10° to 34.83° and affinity towards water leading to higher water permeability. The performance evaluation showed that 90.77% of unwanted by-products (yeast cells and residual substrate) can be removed. This high rejection is also followed by a high and stable flux performance at 40.20 L·m

-2

·h

-1

where the flux was increased by 13 times compared to that of the neat membrane. The PVA-coated PVDF-GO/TiO

2

showed the best anti-biofouling performance with a flux recovery ratio after 5 days incubation (FRR

5d

) of 93.55%. This m

embrane material has excellent prospects in future membrane development for either

in-situ

application or as a pre-filtration in the fermentation process to separate living cells and residual substrates before being further processed in the refining processes.