Oct. 22, 2015

Environmental and industrial pollution has drawn the attention of many researchers to use cheap, green and eco-friendly technologies.
One of the technologies is the application of ceramic membranes in the purification of water and wastewater. A group of Iranian researchers succeeded in the production of a type of ceramic membrane that enjoys very high ability to purify wastewater samples. The application of the membrane will help reducing costs and increasing the rate of wastewater purification process after being mass-produced.
This research tries to produce a type of ceramic-based composite membrane to purify wastewater and to study its performance.
Based on the results of studies, the membranes produced in this research can be used in the purification of water and wastewater to produce healthy drinking water. They can also be used in the molecular separation of gases and ionic parts of solutions in industrial wastewater.

The ceramic-based composite membranes contain three different layers. The first layer is made of alpha alumina through slurry casting method. The middle layer is made of gamma alumina through floating method, and the final layer is nanocoating of titanium dioxide, deposited through sputtering method.
The thickness and homogeneity of the final titanium dioxide nanolayer is very important in these types of membranes because the separation process occurs in this layer. Results show that significant drop is observed in flux and permeability of the membrane with final titanium dioxide layer in comparison with the base sample, which indicates to the appropriate filtration ability of the membrane.