Inorganic membranes made of sintered clay for the treatment of biologically modified water Original Research Article

It is now commonly believed that membrane crossflow filtration processes can be considered as high performance separation techniques, not only in laboratory experiments but also for many industrial applications. The present work aims to describe and characterize inorganic membranes at low cost and to study their performance through a fermentation-crossflow microfiltration (MF) coupling process. New mineral membranes were created from sintered clay in which a certain quantity of coal was added to the mixture before the sintering operation in order to increase and control the membrane porosity. Previous works have shown that these low-cost membranes can be used as MF membranes for surface water clarification. Crossflow MF of a biological fluid model was performed in a membrane bioreactor. In this technique the cell culture was continuous. This allowed us to control the environment of cells and to obtain very high active concentrations by the recycling of the microorganisms. The biological fluid model used in different operations of MF was a suspension ofyeast. Periodic back-flushing coupled with chemical cleaning was done without isolating the membrane from the filtration module. Experiments of characterization of the fouling state of the membrane after a certain time of operation were started using an acoustic technique. Initial results are promising.