Ceramic Membrane-Based on Fly Ash-Clay For River Water Treatment

Abstract

Ceramic membrane-based fly ash clay (FAC), sintered at low temperatures, has been implemented in river water treatment. Ceramic membrane with the composition of fly ash: clay 65%: 35% and sintered at 950 for 4 hours has been fabricated. X-ray diffraction (XRD) and energy-dispersive X-ray (EDX) were used to obtain a chemical characterization of fly ash and clay. The filtration process used dead-end and crossflow systems with variations in operating pressure 0.25; 0.50; 0.75, 1.00, and 1.25 bar. The results showed that a ceramic membrane with a crossflow at an operating pressure of 0.75 bar could reflect Pb, Fe, and Escherichia coli (E.coli) bacteria as much as 96.59%, 95.55%, and 99.29%, respectively. The highest flux amounted to 570.641 L/m2.h generated at 1.25 bar by the crossflow filtration system. The analysis using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) showed that the pore size of the FAC membrane before the filtration process was 0.9µm, with a membrane porosity of 40.82%. After the crossflow filtration process at 0.75 bar and dead-end filtration at 0.25 bar, the membrane porosity decreased to 39.58 % and 37.97%, respectively. The highest lead intensity is found in the FAC membrane, which is used for crossflow filtration at a pressure of 0.75 bar.