Fabrication and characterization of affordable hydrophobic ceramic hollow fibre membrane for contacting processes

Abstract

Affordable hydrophobic hollow fibre membranes were prepared using kaolin and alumina based ceramic powders via a combined phase inversion and sintering technique, followed by a grafting with fluoroalkylsilane (FAS). The crux of the matter in this paper is to study the changes in the properties of the hollow fibre membranes (gas permeation, mechanical strength, pore size, porosity, tortuosity, morphology, and contact angle) by the addition of alumina (Al 2 O 3 ) to the pure kaolin with mono or multiparticle sizes. By varying the overall loading and particle size of alumina addition, different morphologies of the membranes were obtained due to the differences in the path lengths during phase inversion process for each solvent and nonsolvent exchange. The successful grafting with FAS was evidenced by the increase in contact angle from nearly equal to zero degree before grafting to 140° after grafting. Kaolin-alumina-4, one of the hollow fibres fabricated in this work, achieved a mean pore size of 0.25 µm with the bending strength of 96.4 MPa and high nitrogen permeance of 2.3×10 5 mol·m 2 ·Pa 1 ·s 1 , which makes the hollow fibre most suitable for the membrane contactor application.

Superhydrophobic ceramic hollow fibre membranes for trapping carbon dioxide from natural gas via the membrane contactor system

“…It means that the membrane surface is fully covered with uoroalkyl silane and the top layer was created by the grafted C8, which has a shallow thickness (1,42 mm) due to the polymer binder in the precursor bres. It is worth noting that the obtained results in this study are in line with the results found by [33].…”

Effects of geometry and PVP addition on mechanical behavior of PEI membranes for use in wastewater treatment

“…Additionally, the greater hydrophobicity and contact angle could also be related to the mechanical strength and stiffness of PEI 1. Including less water, being less porous, and having less surface roughness are also factors that improve the strength and elastic properties . Being porous and having a higher surface roughness cause significant localized stress concentrations that lead to local plastic behavior and failure .…”

Preparation of hollow fiber membranes from mullite particles with aid of sintering additives

“…Mullite (3Al 2 O 3 •2SiO 2 ) is one of the aluminosilicate ceramic materials, which has the advantages of low thermal expansion coefficient, high mechanical strength, good chemical stability, excellent thermal shock resistance and creep resistance [8][9][10][11]. Industrially, mullite ceramic is produced mainly from various raw mineral materials, such as kaolin [12][13][14][15], bauxite [11,12,16,17], coal gangue [11,18], clay [13,19], and topaz sand [20]. Due to the high abundance of the raw mineral materials, mullite could be regarded as an excellent candidate for the fabrication of porous hollow fiber ceramic membranes.…”