Preparation of disc ceramic membrane by a printing and dip-coating method for oil-water separation

Abstract

Efficient separating oil-water emulsion, it is required that ceramic membranes have the suitable membrane pore size, narrow pore size distribution and low membrane fouling. To realize it, thin and defect-free membrane separation layer should be directly prepared on the large pore size support surface, and the membrane under a dynamic filtration mode. In the present work, disc ceramic membrane without any transition layer was fabricated directly on the surface of support with a pore-size of 3.8 µm via a printing and dip-coating method. The mesh aperture and printing times regulate the thickness of printing layer, preventing the small alumina particles from penetrating into the support. Meanwhile, Dip-coating layer effectively eliminate the defects of the printing layer. Compared with common ceramic membranes, the prepared disc ceramic membrane has a low-cost and high permeability of 1946.6 L/m2·h·bar. Furthermore, the disc ceramic membrane can significantly mitigate membrane fouling and improve the oil-water separation efficiency (>99.5%) under a dynamic membrane filtration mode. This study suggests the practicability of printing and dip-coating method to prepare the disc ceramic membrane with high performance.