High Porous Ceramic for Oil/Water Separation – Calcite as a Sintering Aid

Abstract

The effects of calcite (CaCO 3 ) as sintering aid on the preparation of local aluminum silicate microfiltration membranes were characterized in terms of morphology, thermal shrinkage behavior, porosity, permeation performance, and pure water permeate flux for the membrane. Material selection is based on availability and formability. In order to create a suspension, an organic solvent (N-methyl-2-pyrrolidone) and a polymer binder were added to a mixture of aluminum silicate and calcium carbonate. The coagulant bath consisted of water, and the suspension was extruded into a hollow fiber using a spinneret. The membrane precursor is subjected to high temperatures up to 1250 °C and this process called the sintering process gets strong hollow fiber with high mechanical stability. The addition of the CaCO 3 ) to the dispersion altered the structure of the resulting sintered membranes. The obtained finding demonstrates that carbon calcium addition to aluminum silicate has an affirmative on overall porosity in contrast to those made from purely natural aluminum silicate, as a result the aluminum silicate calcite ceramic microfiltration membrane, which had a high porosity of above 50%, shows the highest permeability of 35.8 ml m -2 •s -1 and above 97% oil rejection when operating at 0.15 MPa trans-membrane pressure in oil-in-water separation experiments. The results show that low-cost aluminum silicate-calcite component of ceramic membranes and the manufactured ceramic microfiltration membrane can handle emulsified oily wastewater.