Abstract:
Keywords: Membrane interlayer-free silica-carbon templated, seawater desalination, rapid
thermal processing
Abstract. Recently, water scarcity is the big issues around the world. Especially in coastal area
where the water distribution could not entranced and able to supply clean water for the citizen. The
one and only solution is processing seawater to produce fresh and potable water. The desalination
process using membrane was recommended to solve this issue. Due to that, the membrane with
good structure and high hydro-stability was necessary to fabricate. The aim of this work is to
investigate the performance of silica-pectin membranes for treating seawater by pervaporation
employing silica based membranes. In this work, the silica-pectin membranes were successfully
fabricated using Tetraethyl orthosilicate (TEOS) as silica precursor. Then, pectin from apple was
also using in various concentrations (0; 0.1 to 0.5%). This organic material was implemented as a
templating agent to produce in silica-pectin thin film. This thin films were dipcoated onto
membranes support during membranes fabrication. These membranes were calcined in air at 300
and 400°C using rapid thermal processing (RTP) technique. All membranes were tested for water
desalination via pervaporation set-up in various feed temperatures (25, 40 and 60℃). Results show
that the membranes produced were crack-free and no pore dense. The FTIR-spectra and Fityk
analysis refer to membrane of 2.5% at 300℃ and 0.5% at 400℃ are the optimum condition due to
silanol and siloxane concentrations. An excellent performance was obtained at 0.5% at 400℃ with
water flux of 8.3 kg.m-2
.h-1 and high salt rejection of 99.4% at 60 ℃ of feed temperature. It clearly
demonstrates that the silica-pectin membrane has a robust structures due to the templating of carbon
chains into silica matrices. The presence of carbon chains in silica matrices may form the smaller
and robust pores as expected, that makes the excellent salt rejection in high feed temperature.
