Ceramic Membrane Supports for Water Treatment Using Low Cost Materials: Elaboration and Characterization

Porous ceramic membranes exhibit more remarkable advantages than their polymeric counterparts due to their excellent properties such as high mechanical strength, good chemical corrosion resistance, high separation efficiency, long lifetime, and easy clean regeneration. This type of membranes is mainly based on the use of raw materials and manufacturing processes typical of traditional ceramic materials. As a result, they are increasingly being applied in a number of industries, especially for water purification. The objective of this work is to study the feasibility of clay as a ceramic material for low cost microfiltration supports prepared using combined phase inversion/sintering technique. The physical properties of the fabricated ceramic membrane support were investigated and evaluated through morphologies, mechanical strength, dope suspension viscosity and pure water permeation. The resulting support has an average porosity of 40.5 ± 2.1% and pore size of about 8-0,5 μm, which are within microfiltration range. Preliminary study shows that the clay ceramic support in this work is potential to water purification application at lower cost.