Fabrication of Microporous Water Filter Using Titanium Dioxide Particles, Silica Particles, and Polyethylene Glycol

Abstract

Abstract. We report the fabrication of microporous filter for use in filtering both inorganic and organic substances from liquid materials. Titania (TiO 2 ) anatase was used as the main material for this filter. Polyethylene glycol (PEG) with average molecular weight of 20,000 was also used as additive to control the formation of pores, especially pore sizes. The mixture of titania and PEG was pressed into cylindrical tablet shape at room temperature and then simply heated inside a furnace up to temperature where the PEG decomposed into gas to leave only connected titania particles. The use of titania as base material for the filter allows the organic substances that trapped inside the filter pores to be easily removed by heating up the used filter at above decomposition temperature of the trapped organics. We also made other filter by adding small amount of silica (SiO 2 ) particles to reduce the size of the pores as well as to improve the mechanical strength. We observed that filters containing silica particles, with smaller in size compared to titania, resulted in better mechanical strength, smaller in pore sizes and better filtering results in term of turbidity and dissolved oxygen (DO) content. This method is potential for development of larger scale and cheaper water filters for use in various applications.

A Simple Method for Determining Surface Porosity Based on SEM Images Using OriginPro Software

“…The distance of this base plane to top of the particles is equal to particle radius, R. The porosity of surface was determined by merely calculating the space beneath plane triangle OAB and the space beneath curved surface of the particle, the sides of which are bounded by triangle OAB. The volume of space beneath the triangle OAB is As another proof for our approach, we determined the porosity of titania pellet made by pressing tinania powder into cylindrical shaped and then sintered some minutes at 800 o C 13,14) . The titania particles were anatase in structure and purchased from Bratachem (Indonesia).…”

Permeability, Strength and Filtration Performance for Uncoated and Titania-Coated Clay Wastewater Filters

“…When the temperature reaches 100°C, the ceramic undergoes evaporation of loosely-bound water. Since PEG has a flash point of 182-287°C (Priatama et al, 2010), firing at that temperature for two h ensures decomposition and evaporation of PEG from the ceramic to form pores. When the sample is fired at 900°C for five h, the clay particles sinter and bond to produce a strong and hard porous ceramic (Putyra et al, 2008).…”

Morphology and Porosity of Fe3O4@SiO2 Core-Shell: Adsorption for Heavy Metal Pb(II)

“…It is known that Fe3O4-NPs which have super paramagnetic properties, can be synthesized from abundant iron sand minerals in Indonesia, this material has broad application prospects, such as: biocompatible [1], biosensing [2], contras agent for MRI system [3], Drug Delivary System [4], absorbent heavy-metal (Cr, Pb, Ag) [5], [6]. The same thing for SiO2-NPs has inert properties which are good insulators and are not easy to react with chemical compounds, high porosity, low thermal conductive; can be synthesized from quartz sand, and organic materials of ricehusk ash, baggase-ash which is abundantly available in Indonesia; SiO2-NPs has a wide range of applications, such as: anti-aging material [7], divice-optoelectronic [8], coating anticorrosion [9], DDS [10], cosmetic [11], water-filter system [12], adsoption for hevy-metal [10], [13], packaging system [11], etc.…”