Ceramic capillary membranes

Fraunhofer Institute for Interfacial Engineering and Biotechnology

Commercially available ceramic membranes

In general, ceramic materials are chemically thermally and mechanically stable. Thus ceramic membranes find frequent use in liquid filtration in food, chemical and pharmaceutical industries, as well as in the bioengineering processes.
Different geometries of ceramicmembranes have been produced worldwide, e.g. plate, disk, tube, multichannel and honeycomb. However, the commercially available ceramic membranes are relatively heavy and their fabrication is rather expensive, with membrane areas rarely higher than 1,000 m²/m³.
Ceramic capillaries produced at the Fraunhofer IGB allow these advantages in combination with high packing densities, both compact and light-weighted.

Cost-efficient production process

Fraunhofer IGB develops a cost-efficient process for the continuous production of ceramic capillaries via a phase inversion process. Ceramic powders are dispersed within organic binder systems. The resulting slurries are extruded through annular nozzles into aqueous baths. In this way, capillaries can be obtained from oxides, nitrides, carbides or even metals. The membrane characteristics can be tuned through the slurry composition, the spinning process parameters and the sintering procedures.

Ceramic capillary
Fig. 1: Ceramic capillary, Lyocell spinning process.


Ceramic capillary
Fig. 2: Ceramic capillary, polymeric spinning process.

α-Al2O3 capillary membranes

Typical α -Al2O3 have an outer diameter ranging between 0.5-2.0 mm, while the wall thickness is between 0.05-0.2 mm. So far, capillaries with a pore size of 0.2-1.0 mm have been produced with a porosity of 25-70 per cent. Another characteristic of these membranes is a well-defined pore size distribution. The bending strength of the capillaries reaches values up to 125 MPa indicating an excellent mechanical stability. Altogether the characteristics render these porous capillaries perfect basic materials for asymmetric membranes, which can be obtained by depositing further selective layers. Fig. 1 and Fig. 2 show SEM images for typical capillaries with different characteristics.

Ceramic capillary membrane modules

Purely ceramic module of Al2O3 capillaries
Fig. 3: Purely ceramic module of Al2O3 capillaries (membrane area ~ 0,15 m2).

Modules with uncoated alpha-alumina capillary membranes, which means microfiltration membranes, can be directly used for the filtration of solutions, emulsions or heterogeneous liquids. A 0.15 m2 module for microfiltration is shown in Fig. 3. Such a module can be used up to 200°C and up to 8 bar. The permeability for water is in the range of 1700 l/m2 h bar. Such module can be integrated into technical processes by stainless steel connectors.

Applications and perspectives

Ceramic capillary modules provide an optimum solution with respect to size, weight and contact surface, in ultrafiltration and nanofiltration, in gas separation and in chemical reaction technology.

The automotive industry is expected to be a broad field of application for compact capillary membrane modules. The efficient removal of NOx from the air ventilated into the passenger compartment is still unresolved. Likewise, powerful catalytic burners are lacking for the reduction of soot emissions in the exhaust gas of diesel engines.

The in situ reforming of fossil fuels or bio-alcohol and the subsequent conversion of CO via water-gas-shift reaction are key processes in the automotive fuel cell technology. In the future, Fraunhofer IGB will focus on the development and engineering of membrane modules for specific processes and of membrane processes.