The modified phase inversion and sintering technique for fabrication of ceramic membrane: Influence of kaolin composition and drying temperature

Abstract

The practical use of ceramic membrane has been limited by their fabrication technique and brittleness. Nowadays, phase inversion and sintering technique for ceramic membrane fabrication has been received widely attention. However, the unavoidable unstable structure for fabrication of flat-sheet ceramic membrane using this technique is still becoming an issue. To overcome this problem, in this paper, flat-sheet ceramic membrane have been developed via modified phase inversion and sintering technique using kaolin as main ceramic material, polyethersulfone (PESf) as the polymeric binder and N-methylpyyrolidone (NMP) as the solvent, respectively. The modified phase inversion has been done by adding drying process before the immersion into solvent. The influence of kaolin composition (60-80g) and drying temperature (room temperature and 3°C) have been investigated extensively to optimize the preparation. The results showed that the ceramic membrane prepared at 80g kaolin composition with drying temperature of 3°C displayed the highest bending strength of 53.1g with excellent BSA and humic acid rejection. Therefore, this study proved that the problem of unstable fabrication technique for flat-sheet ceramic membrane can be solved via modified phase inversion through the influence of high composition and low drying temperature.