Synthesis a low template B-ZSM-5 membrane with suitable morphology and high performance for the separation of acetone/water mixtures

Abstract

Synthesizing zeolite membrane using a templating method is often expensive and consumes a lot of energy. Therefore, the synthesis of a high quality B-ZSM-5 zeolite membrane using a low organic template would be required. Here, the synthesis of the low-template B-ZSM-5 zeolite membrane was performed on the surface of α-alumina support modified by TiO2-Bohemite via secondary growth technique under the optimized seeding conditions. A multi-objective optimization method was utilized to identify the optimal support seeding parameters to enhance the performance of the synthesized membrane. Optimization of seeding conditions leads to achieving well intergrowth zeolite membrane with the low template by applying fewer layers. The prepared membrane with a thickness of less than 10 μm showed a high pervaporation performance with a high acetone/water separation factor of 500 and a total flux of 0.13 kg m−2 h−1 for the 1 wt% acetone/water mixture at 333 K and 260 mmHg. The impacts of feed temperature, permeate pressure, and feed concentration on the pervaporation performance, total fluxes as well as membrane separation factor, were investigated. Our results revealed that the separation factor could be significantly increased by increasing the permeate pressure.