Low-cost ceramic microfiltration membrane made from natural phosphate for pretreatment of raw seawater for desalination

Abstract

Abstract A novel ceramic microfiltration (MF) membrane was prepared from natural phosphate and its properties were thoroughly characterized. An investigation of the effect of sintering temperature on the features of phosphate membrane was carried out in the range from 900 to 1100\u2009°C. The optimized membrane sintered at 1000\u2009°C exhibits 697\u2009L h-1\u2009m-2\u2009bar-1 of permeability, 25.6% of porosity, 0.26\u2009µm of average pore size and 19.7\u2009MPa of flexural strength. When evaluated for filtration of raw seawater as a potential pretreatment for reverse osmosis desalination, the prepared membrane reduced total organic carbon (TOC) and turbidity by 73 and 98%, respectively, as well as reducing silt density index (SDI) from 5.41 to 3.25. Furthermore, the fouling mechanism and the flux recovery were also studied. Finally, simple cleaning of the prepared membrane performed after the MF experiment led to recover 74% of its original water flux.