Abstract
The focus of this work is to assess the quality of porous membranes prepared from naturally occurring kaolin clays and to evaluate the performance of tubular ceramic membranes treating integrated raw effluents from seafood industry. This material has been chosen due to its natural abundance, its non-toxicity, low cost and its valuable properties. The preparation and characterization of porous tubular ceramic membranes, using kaolin powder with and without corn starch as poreforming agent, were reported. SEM photographs indicated that the membrane surface was homogeneous. The effects of material compositions, additives and the relatively lower sintering temperature, ranging from 1100° to 1250°C, on porosity, average pore size, pore-size distribution and mechanical strength of membranes have been investigated. A correlation between microstructure and mechanical properties of membranes has been discussed. The performance of the novel ceramic membranes thus obtained was determined by evaluating both the water permeability and rejection. The obtained membrane was used to treat cuttlefish effluents generated from the conditioning seawater product industry which consumes a great amount of water. Cross-flow microfiltration was performed then, in order to reduce the turbidity and chemical oxygen demand (COD).
Highlights
Water pollution is one of the most important crises in modern times because water is the most important basis of life
The development of low cost ceramic membranes based on natural materials such as apatite powder [13], natural raw clay [14,15,16], graphite [17], phosphates [18,19], dolomite, kaolin [20,21,22,23,24] and waste materials such as fly ash [25,26,27,28,29], appeared as an efficient solution to treat waste water at a low cost
2.4 Membranes characterization The evolution of densification and surface quality of the membranes sintered at different temperatures were determined by scanning electron microscopy
Summary
Water pollution is one of the most important crises in modern times because water is the most important basis of life. There is much current interest in the application of microfiltration and ultrafiltration membranes in separation procedures because of their potential for the treatment of large quantities of wastewater [1,2,3,4,5]. This is a successful way to solve water pollution crisis and to maintain the environment wellness. 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 [8,9,10], zirconia, titania and silica [11, 12]. The properties of the ceramic membranes are mainly determined by their composition, the pore-former content and the sintering temperature
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