Clay plane membranes: development and characterization

Plane supports based on clay are elaborate by using organic additives like agents of porosity. They are then characterized by various techniques: mercury porosimetry, nitrogen adsorption/desorption, electronic scan microscopy. According to the nature of clay, the nature of the organic additive and the technique of development used, the results are different. In this work, we present the evolution of the diameters of the pores and their distributions according to several experimental parameters. The whole of these results made it possible to direct materials thus obtained towards their applications in the water treatment by the membrane separation techniques. According to their diameters of the pores, they can be used either as membranes of microfiltration or like supports for membranes of ultrafiltration.

This study has allowed us successfully to develop silicalite membranes on a Moroccan clay support that present an attractive porosity. The double step synthesis used produced silicalite continuous films which would allow the membranes to have operable characteristics in several applications. The use of these membranes in environment depollution can be an alternative to current technologies by their low price. For this purpose, an ongoing study is undertaken by separating relevant mixture.