THE USE and CHARACTERIZATION OF COMPOSITE ALUMINA, ZIRCONIA, SILICA TITANIA CERAMIC MEMBRANES IN GAS SEPARATION

The Aim, the Signaficance, and the Expected Outcomes of the Project:
     Separation and its related technologies will increasingly function as an integral part of many manufacturing industries in the future. The progress of civilization has been earmarked by the ability to separate and recombine materials and matter. Better separation techniques will lead to the discovery of novel products and aid in achieving the goal of more efficient manufacturing. The application areas of membranes have been expanding because they are more economical, efficient and faster when compared with other separation techniques. Ceramic membranes are thermally stable at high temperatures, chemically stable and corrosion resistant to many solvents, and mechanically strong at high pressures when compared with polymeric membranes.

    Inorganic-ceramic research effort have been concentrated on designing the microstructure-pore structure of the most selective thin top layers of the mostly asymmetric-composite membranes. It is widely accepted that the preparation of defect free ceramic membranes with uniform pores less than 2 nm in sizes can be highly selective in gas separation applications

    The preparation and characterization of composite ceramic membranes suitable for use in gas separation applications by using sol-gel techniques will be investigated in this work. Stable zirconia, boehmite, titania and silica sols will be prepared by varying a number of important sol preparation parameters. These sols will be used for the formation of thin membrane layers on alpha alumina supports. Unsupported membrane layers will be characterized by nitrogen adsorption, SEM, TGA,XRD, FTIR and optic microscopy for pore size determination and microstructure analysis.The gas permeation properties of these membranes will be further investigated in a permation setup . The results of this is expected to contribute to the knowledge on the engineering of these nanofiltration gas separation membranes.