Phenolic compounds are abundantly found in effluent stream of various chemical, petrochemical and steel industries. existing technologies like solvent extraction, adsorption, chemical oxidation, biological treatment, distillation are not cost effective and are time consuming as well. as an alternative, effluent treatment using mixed matrix membrane (mmm) of cellulose acetate and alumina nanoparticle was undertaken. this special type of mmms were prepared using alumina nanoparticles and cellulose acetate phthalate (cap) by varying concentration of nanoparticles in the range of 10 to 25 wt%. the addition of nanoparticles increased the porosity and permeability of the membrane up to 20 wt% of alumina.