Magnetic magnetite (Fe3O4) nanoparticles have attracted a great deal of attention in both fundamental research and practical applications over the past decades. Down to the nanoscale, superparamagnetic Fe3O4 nanoparticles with only a single magnetic domain exhibit high magnetic susceptibility, which provides a stronger and faster magnetic response. Their superparamagnetic properties together with other intrinsic properties such as low toxicity, high surface area-to-volume ratio and simple separation methodology, making them ideal for environmental remediation, biomedical, and agricultural applications. This review discusses three conventional wet chemical methods, including chemical co-precipitation, sol-gel synthesis and thermal decomposition for the preparation of superparamagnetic Fe3O4 nanoparticles with controlled size and magnetic properties. Nowadays, with the growing research interest in Fe3O4 nanoparticles, there is a great amount of researches reported on efficient routes to prepare size-controlled magnetic nanoparticles. Thus, this review is designed to report the recent information from synthesis to the characterization of Fe3O4 nanoparticles as well as the discussion of future perspective in this research area.
Ceramic membranes have been gaining so much interest for oily water separation due to their superior characteristics such as good anti-fouling property, superhydrophilic, as well as excellent thermal and chemical stabilities. However, ceramic membranes are very expensive which hinders their uses in large scale applications. Therefore, the aim of our study is to develop a low cost palm oil fuel ash (POFA) based ceramic hollow fiber ceramic membrane for oily water separation application. An asymmetric membrane structure consisting of sponge-like and macrovoid layers were acquired using a combined phase inversion and sintering technique. The membranes were sintered at different temperatures ranging from 1000 to 1150 °C. The sintered membranes were characterized in terms of morphology, mechanical strength, porosity, permeate flux and oil rejection performance. A high oil rejection efficiency of up to 96.0% was obtained for the membrane sintered at 1050 °C with the permeate flux of 185.42 L/m2h at the applied pressure of 3 bar. Based on the comparison with other ceramic membranes reported in the literature, it can be concluded that POFA based ceramic hollow fiber membrane showed a comparable performance and thus can be a promising low cost alternative ceramic membrane for oily water separation application.
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