Evaluating the Sintering Temperature Control Towards the Adsorptivity of Ammonia onto the Natural Zeolite Based Hollow Fibre Ceramic Membrane

Abstract

The disproportionate quantity of ammonia presence in water has led to serious drinkable water scarcity worldwide. The abundant source of mineral and superior cations selectivity has made natural zeolite as a good adsorbent for the ammonia removal. This work aims to fabricate natural zeolite based hollow fibre ceramic membrane (HFCM) via extrusion based phase inversion and sintering techniques for the ammonia removal in wastewater. The physical properties of the fabricated HFCM were investigated through surface morphologies and pure water permeation. The performance of the HFCM for ammonia removal was studied using synthetic wastewater with HFCM prepared at different sintering temperatures. Of all studied sintering temperatures, it was found that 1050 °C was the best fabrication conditions. The membrane also revealed acceptable morphologies (roughness) and water permeation flux of 249.57 L/m2.h to which both contributed to the performance of the HFCM. The ammonia removal using the fabricated HFCM gave an outstanding performance with nearly 90% rejection, which probably is due to the synergistic effect of the two processes in the HFCM system, i.e. adsorption and separation. It was found that natural zeolite based HFCM has a great potential to be developed as a single – step ammonia removal in wastewater treatment.