Effect of Water-to-Cement Ratio on the Property of a Macro-Porous Cementitious Microfiltration Membrane

Abstract

A novel cementitious microfiltration membrane was fabricated for water permeation. The membrane wasproduced using low-cost cement and quartz particles under ambient conditions, rather than a sintering process as was generally applied. By the analysis of SEM, pore size distribution and water permeation tests, the effect of water-to-cement ratio (w/c) on membrane structure was studied. The membranes havebimodal pore size distributions, with varying mean pore sizes of 6.5-8.7 μm. With the increase of w/c from 0.3 to 0.8, membrane pore sizes and porosities show a similar trend of first increase and then decrease. Moreover, membrane structure tends to dense in this process, which results in an obviously decrease ofmembrane water flux from 53 to 1 m3·m-2·h-1·bar-1.