Development of an Asymmetric Ultrafiltration Membrane from Naturally Occurring Kaolin Clays: Application for the Cuttlefish Effluents Treatment

Sonia Bouzid Rekik,Jamel Bouaziz,Andre Deratani,Semia Baklouti

doi:10.4172/2155-9589.1000159

Abstract

This work concerns to the development and characterization of support and ultrafiltration membranes from naturally occurring- kaolin clays as principal components. The preparation and characterization of porous tubular supports, using kaolin powder with corn starch as poreforming agent, were reported. It has been found that the average pore size was about 1 μm while the pore volume was 44% for supports sintered at 1150°C with a flexural strength of about 15 MPa. The deposition of the active layer was performed by slip casting method. The rheological study of various coatings with different concentration of kaolin powder, polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) and water under different conditions regarding temperature and stirring time was done. After drying at room temperature for 24 h, the membrane was sintered at 650°C. The average pore diameter of the active layer was 11 nm and the thickness was around 9 μm. The determination of the water permeability shows a value of 78 l/h.m2.bar. This membrane can be used for crossflow ultrafiltration. The application of the cuttlefish effluent treatment shows an important decrease of turbidity, inferior to 1.5 NTU and chemical organic demand (COD), retention rate of about 87%. So, it seems that this membrane is suitable to use for wastewater treatment.

Highlights

Membrane separation processes extend more and more every day in industrial uses, with new requirements concerning the materials and preparation procedures
The application of the cuttlefish effluent treatment shows an important decrease of turbidity, inferior to 1.5 NTU and chemical organic demand (COD), retention rate of about 87%
No other components were observed, because the impurities are in so tiny quantity (Table 4) and most of them are probably incorporated into the crystal structure of kaolinite

Summary

Introduction

Membrane separation processes extend more and more every day in industrial uses, with new requirements concerning the materials and preparation procedures. Due to their potential application in a wide range of industrial processes such as water and effluent treatments [15], drink clarification [6,7], milk pasteurization [8,9,10,11], biochemical processing [12], inorganic membrane technology grows in importance. Ceramic membrane fabrication, even though commercially available, still remains highly expensive from a technical and economic point of view due to the use of expensive powders such as alumina [18,19,20,21,22], zirconia, titania and silica [23,24]. To reduce the cost of ceramic membrane fabrication, recent research works are focused on the use of cheaper raw materials such as apatite powder [25], natural raw clay [26,27,28,29], graphite [30], phosphates [31,32], dolomite, kaolin [33,34,35,36,37] and waste materials such as fly ash [38,39,40,41,42]

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Conclusion