Silica Membranes for Wetland Saline Water Desalination: Performance and Long Term Stability

Abstract

In this study, silica thin film pH=6 (precursor TEOS:tetraethyl ortosilicate) developed from sol gel process and deposited (2 layers) directly onto alumina substrate(tubular support with 100 nm pore size) without depositing interlayer (interlayer-free).Then, the desalination process via pervaporation was applied to test the membranesperformanceusing artificial saline water and wetland saline water. Results show the decrease of water flux (1.9 to 1.43 kg m-2 h-1) and salt rejection(97 to 95%) when using artificial salty water (0-7.5 wt%) and the long-term stability of silica membrane was stable at 1.7 kg m-2 h-1 for over 100 hours when using wetland saline water as a feed.