The micro/nanodesign of ceramic tubular mf-uf-nf membrane modules and the inverstigation of their utilization in ceramic industres wastewater management

Day by day with the rapid growth of the human population in the world, the available clean water levels are decreases and becomes dirty. One of the leading causes of water pollution is industrial activities. Especially, industries that are working on traditional products attract attention with their high wastewater amounts. Ceramic sector operating in this direction is stands out with wastewaters having a high amount of suspended solids. In this study; 4 different ceramic wastewaters from 2 factories operating in the ceramic industry; at 2, 4 and 6 bar pressures, was treated with tubular ceramic support and microfiltration membranes which produced from alfa-aluminum oxide (α-Al2O3). MF membranes were obtained by coating the support membranes by the sol-gel method. Before the treatment process; characterization of ceramic wastewaters was carried out and porosity of support membranes was determined using mercury porosimetry. Pore diameters of support membranes range from 0.8896 to 1.1946 μm and their porosity from 28.32 to 32.73%. Moreover, the pollutant loads of wastewaters were also found to be very high. For this reason, wastewaters were subjected to a pre-filtration process and the amount of pollution loads were greatly reduced. In the treatment processes carried out, membrane performance parameters; membrane fluxes (pure water fluxes and wastewater fluxes) and membrane pollution removal efficiencies (COD, SS, pH and conductivity) were investigated and the effects on the amount of the usage of membrane, membrane porosity, wastewater pollution loads and different system pressures were investigated to these parameters. Membrane fluxes were observed to increase with increasing pressure and decrease with increasing membrane usage. However, It has been found that the amount of decrease in the fluxes of membrane was increased as the pressure increases and is also influenced by the properties of the substances that make up the pollution load of the waste water. In addition, it was determined that the processing times decreased with the increase of membrane currents. The pure water fluxes obtained with support membranes were measured in the range of 726,91-3649,43 L/m2h and wastewater fluxes in the range of 147,41-2235,28 L/m2h; the pure water fluxes obtained from MF membranes were measured in the range of 482,64-3030,84 L/m2h and wastewater fluxes in the range of 542,70-2194,11 L/m2h. It was seen that the pollution removal efficiencies of the membranes obtained by the treatment of wastewater were very high especially in the COD and SS parameters of wastewater. But, there has been no regular and significant change in pH values of wastewater. However, with the rise of the pressure, it has been found that the amounts of COD and SS residues in wastewater are further reduced. In addition, the removal efficiency of MF membranes was found to be higher than that of support membranes due to the reduction of pore size. The highest removal efficiencies obtained with support membranes in the wastewater, SS, COD and conductivity parameters, respectively, are 96.99-99.98-57.12%; The highest removal efficiencies obtained with MF membranes are 99,15-100-70,65%.