Hydrophobic Ceramic Hollow Fiber Membrane: Fabrication and Potential Use in Membrane Distillation for Desalination

Ceramic membranesCeramic membrane have not received wide industrial attention due to the cost of the raw materials (titania, alumina, and zirconia) used in producing commercial ceramic membranes. Furthermore, these raw materials require high sinteringSintering temperature due to their high melting point. Besides, it is difficult to make a balance between mechanical strength and porosity at these high sinteringSintering temperatures. Considering the huge potential of ceramic membranes, a lot of effort has been dedicated to synthesize the alternative natural-based ceramic membranesCeramic membrane using materials like ball clayClay, bauxite, and kaolin. Membranes for use in distillation processes can be fabricated from these natural materials which can serve as a great replacement for the costly commercialized ceramic materials. Due to a number of its notable advantages over traditional reverse osmosis (RO) and thermal desalinationDesalination processes, membrane distillationMembrane distillation (MD) has become an emerging technology for desalinationDesalination processes. It uses hydrophobic membranesHydrophobic membrane and is thermally driven to achieve the separation of non-volatile solutions from volatile solutes. During MD processes, the aqueous solution is heated and vapor from the aqueous solution travels through the hydrophobic membraneHydrophobic membrane and condenses as a high-quality product on the opposite side of the membrane. To achieve great MD performance, the membranes used in the process should have high liquid entry pressure (LEP), the ideal mean pore size, low heat conductivity, the ideal membrane thickness, high porosity, a narrow pore size distribution, and low tortuosity. MD can be used for desalinationDesalination, heavy metal removal, and resource recovery, among other things. The essential concepts, membranes, and applications of MD are covered in this chapter. Also discussed is the membrane hydrophobization process, which involves using low surface energy membrane materials, functionalization with low surface energy materials, and nanotechnology applications.