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 ceramic membranes 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.