Processing and characterization of microfiltration supports prepared from alumina powders

Abstract

Alcoa A-16 SG commercial alumina powder is widely used for the preparation of porous supports for alumina membrane layers. In this work, a comparison is made concerning the use of different alumina powders. For this purpose two types of powders with different physical and chemical characteristics to Alcoa powder were chosen. The powders of interest were Seydisehir alumina, which is a local alumina produced for metallurgical purposes by the Bayer process, and the granulated form of this alumina obtained by spray-drying. Due to the coarser microstructure of the substrates prepared from spray-dried powders, the pore size was larger and the amount of the flux was higher than the other two substrates which were prepared from the processed Seydisehir and Alcoa powders in identical conditions.