Ceramic filters for oil emulsion treatments

This work focused on obtaining low-cost macroporous ceramic tubes to be used as filters or as supports for the preparation of multilayer ceramic membranes. A Tunisian natural clay was used as raw material and cellulose as porogen agent. Cellulose fibers obtained from paper were used. The tubular supports were shape formed by extrusion in order to obtain a low-cost material with high porosity low shrinkage. The characterization of the process has been carried out studying the phase evolution, microstructure, pore structure, mechanical strength, and water permeability at various sintering temperatures. The porosity was improved adding 10 wt.% of cellulose to the clay and sintering temperatures were between 800 and 900°C. The sintered macroporous support with 10 wt.% cellulose, sintered at 850°C exhibited good performance such as porosity 40%, mechanical strength 6.5 MPa, and water permeability 8.5 L/h m. Finally, an emulsion of oil was significantly cleaned. A rejection rate of 50% for 10 min of treatment time was obtained. This work shows the possibility to develop cost-effective ceramic support with controllable pore size, porosity, and high strength for high performance membranes.This work has been partially supported by the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness of Spain under project MAT2013-48426-C2-1R and the project Medyna “Maghreb-EU research staff exchange on geodynamics, geohazards, and applied geology in Northwest Africa”