Preparation and performance of interlayer-free organosilica membranes on zirconia support

Organo-silica membrane has a great potential to purify water which contains salt content. The aims of this study are to prepare and investigate the performance of organosilica membranes coated on zirconia support applied for water desalination. Literally, alumina membranes support is the most common membrane support employed for membranes separation. It is found that a zirconia is chemically more stable than alumina material. The method of this work was firstly facricated organosilica membrane using Tetraethyl orthosilicate (TEOS) as a precursor and citric acid. The citric acid acts as an organic catalyst during sol-gel process method. The sol-gel solution was then inner-coated directly onto the zirconia support without interlayer and calcined at 175°C in a vacuum condition. The layers were coated and calcined via Rapid Thermal Processing for four times. Desalination through pervaporation was carried out at room temperature (∼25 ◦C) in various artificial salt concentrations (0, 0.3 and 3.5wt%). The highest of water flux is reported until 4.418 kg.m-2.h−1and salt rejection (>99.9%) for all feeds. From the experiment, it was discovered that the organosilica membranes has excellent performance when applied for water desalination when using zirconia material as membranes support.