This study prepares different activated carbon (AC) polymer composite membranes and investigates their operation characteristics of filtration and backwashing. Experimental results show that the addition of AC particles and hydrophilic polyethylene glycol (PEG) in the polymer membranes can improve the pure water flux (PWF) and permeation flux (PF) during filtration, as well as increase the flux recovery rate (FRR) after backwashing. The optimum transmembrane flux, filtration pressure and time of AC composite membrane were 45 Lm(-2) h(-1), 196.8 kPa and 60 min; and the optimum backwashing pressure and time were 393.6 kPa and 10 min, respectively. Under such conditions, the flux recovery rate of the AC composite membranes achieved 87.5%. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.