Application of Low Cost Ceramic Membranes in Wastewater Treatment

Since 1980, ceramic membranes have attracted the attention for separation of mixtures of liquids orgases primarily due their chemical and thermal stability under harsh application conditions. Robust ceramic membranes have better antifouling properties with an ease of cleaning the impurities deposited on the membrane surface during their prolong use. However, high costs of these membranes have prevented their large scale industrial applications. Thus there is a growing demand for new generation of ceramic membranes based on low-cost raw materials and processes. In view of this, a book proposal on ‘Low cost ceramic membranes: Materials and fabrication process’ was submitted and it was approved by Springer recently.Low cost ceramic membranes is a relatively newer area of interest which has emerged to address the requirements for processing low value process streams like wastewater generated from various sources including domestic,municipal and industrial effluents. Efficient and economic technique for wastewater treatment is a challenging issuedue to their varied nature and specific characteristics depending on their sources of generation.Presence of the micropollutantsmake the situation more complex requiring selection of suitable membrane and optimizing the treatment processconditions particularly for recovery and reuse of the treated water or removal of the pollutants prior to the dischargein the environment following relevant specifications. In this book, an attempt has been made to review the current status of developing tailor made low cost membranes and membrane based separation processes for applications in wastewater treatment. It will also present an overview of industry specific case studies upholding the waste-to-resource strategy for utilization of low-cost ceramic membranes in industrialwastewatertreatment. The conventional method for wastewater treatment is based on activated sludge process in which initial organic loadings for biodegradable components onlycan be reduced. Membrane technology, being a tertiary treatment technique, is generally adopted for processing pretreated wastewater streams. As a result, applicationof membrane technology isoftenlimited to complying with the environmental norms unless the issues on recovery of products/by-products are involved in treating the industrial effluents. Robust ceramic membranesoffer provenlifecycles up to 20 years or more as well as have several advantages like handling higher solid loading,less susceptibility to fouling the membrane surface and thus minimum deterioration of membrane performance with time along with the need for frequent cleaning, etc.This book aims to highlight the methods, results and examples that demonstrate low-cost ceramic membranes possess similar features and advantages comparable to the commercially available ceramic membranes thereby minimizing the prohibitivecostof their usagein wastewater treatment. Thus, the readers who are looking for more economical alternatives for wastewater treatment can be introduced with the cheaper membrane materialsas well as onthe selection and method of application of such membranes inthe treatment processes which can not only have much longer lifetime than their polymeric counterpart but also be cost competitive leading to an overall long term benefits.