The main technical barriers that impede photocatalytic membrane reactor (PMR) commercialization remain on the post-recovery of the catalyst particles after water treatment. To overcome this problem, surface modification of polypropylene macroporous membrane was performed with the technique of photoinduced reversible addition-fragmentation chain transfer grafting polymerization of acrylic acid. Titanium oxide photocatalysts were introduced to the acrylic acid grafted membrane surface. Phenol decomposition was carried out under UV irradiation in a recycle batch photocatalytic membrane reactor. The normalized membrane flux reached 1.7 times that of the unmodified membrane for the PAAc modified membrane. Introducing TiO 2 photocatalysts to the membrane surface reduced the normalized membrane flux slightly. For the PMR with a grafting degree of 12.9% (wt) of PAAc on the membrane surface, the corresponding decomposition percentage was 32.5% after 6 h UV light irradiation.