Fabrication and characterization of pyrophyllite-based ceramic membranes: filtration experiments with pure water, bovine serum albumin solution, and oil-in-water emulsion

Abstract

Pyrophyllite-based ceramic membranes with an alumina coating layer were fabricated in this study. Filtration experiments with pure water, bovine serum albumin (BSA) solution, and oil-in-water (OW) emulsion were performed to characterize the filtration properties of the membranes. In the filtration experiments with pure water, the hydraulic permeability and pore radius of the membranes were determined to be 1.55 x 10(-6) m(3)/m(2) s kPa and 1.1 x 10(-7) m, respectively. In the filtration experiments with BSA solution, the rejection rates of BSA solution in the membranes were very low (7.2%-16.1%). These results were attributed to the far smaller particle size of the BSA (11 nm) than the pore size of the membranes. In the filtration experiments with OW emulsion, the rejection rates of OW emulsion were very high (72.3%-91.8%) because the size of the oil droplets (250-490 nm) was larger than the pore size of the membranes. Five combined fouling models of cake-complete, cake-intermediate, complete-standard, intermediate-standard, and cake-standard were used to analyze the BSA and OW emulsion filtration data.