Ceramic Membranes: Materials – Components – Potential Applications

Abstract

Gas separation in dense ceramic membranes is driven by the partial pressure gradient across the membrane. The mixed conducting materials most commonly used are single‐phase perovskites or fluorites. In recent years, the development of dual‐phase systems combining a mixed ion‐conducting and electron‐conducting phase has increased. The advantage is that a larger number of very stable materials systems is available. The membrane designs currently used include planar, tubular, hollow‐fiber, and honeycomb membranes. Each of these designs has specific advantages and disadvantages, depending on the application. Innovative joining concepts are also often needed due to the high temperatures involved. These usually involve the use of glass‐ceramic sealants or reactive metal brazes. Applications focus either on the separation of gases alone, i.e., the supply of oxygen or hydrogen, or on membrane reactors. In membrane reactors, a chemical reaction occurs on one or both sides of the membrane in addition to gas separation. The supply of gases is of potential interest for power plants, for the cement, steel, and glass industries, for the medical sector, and for mobile applications. Membrane reactors can be used to produce base chemicals or synthetic fuels.

Dendritic Polymers as Promising Additives for the Manufacturing of Hybrid Organoceramic Nanocomposites with Ameliorated Properties Suitable for an Extensive Diversity of Applications

“…not containing silicon) hyperbranched PEIs form nanocomplexes via hydrogen bonding with orthosilicic acid produced by the acid hydrolysis of TEOS. These nanostructures grow, faster at neutral pH (7,5) substantially slower at lower (pH 5) and transform to hydrogels. When dried the became organoceramic xerogels.…”

“…Their capability to adopt controlled and diverse combined conformations through easily accessible, low-cost, ambient temperature preparation methods render them excellent candidates for the production of hybrids with optimized properties such as core-shell nanoparticles. They also consist excellent alternatives in order to avoid the undesirable defects of their elementary equivalents, for instance toxicity, instability and high solubility [4][5][6][7].…”

“…Among the numerous properties of ceramic membranes, the most distinguished are mechanical tolerance, chemical inertia, thermal stability, damage impedance, energy conservation, high hydrophobicity, satisfactory flux at low pressures and excessive working lifetime [6][7][8]. All these characteristics contribute to the suitability and expanded applicability of these membranes in various fields such as gas separation [9][10][11] and filtration technology [7,8], water decontamination processes, water and wastewater treatment, desalination [12][13][14][15][16] and catalysis [11,17]. Another advantage of ceramic membranes is their employment in both microfiltration (MF) and ultrafiltration (UF) processes and less frequently in nanofiltration (NF) and reverse-osmosis (RO) [18].…”

Processing Ceramic Proton Conductor Membranes for Use in Steam Electrolysis

“…This advanced casting technique involves the inversion of the traditional tape casting approach’s necessary manufacturing steps and produces homogeneous, large-area, flat ceramic films. This method has been used for the fabrication of solid oxide-oxygen ions conducting fuel and electrolysis cell (O-SOFC/O-SOEC) [ 21 , 23 ] as well as hydrogen [ 31 , 32 ] and oxygen separation membranes [ 33 , 34 , 35 ]. Another great advantage of this technique is its potential to minimize manufacturing cost since multi-layer components are laminated and co-sintered in a single step [ 23 , 35 ].…”

Porous Functionally Graded Plates: An Assessment of the Influence of Shear Correction Factor on Static Behavior

“…Membranes can also be used for gas separation applications, typically possessing a microporous substrate, a mesoporous intermediate layer (or more), and a microporous top layer (or more). Regarding materials, α-Al 2 O 3 is the most frequent, but TiO 2 , ZrO 2 , SiC, and their combinations are also very common [35]. For industrial wastewater treatment applications, ceramic microfiltration membranes made of Al 2 O 3 , SiO 2 , ZrO 2 , TiO 2 , and their composites present excellent behavior.…”