SBIR Phase II: Low-cost Ceramic Membranes for Drinking Water Treatment

小企业创新研究（SBIR）第二阶段项目旨在开发一种制造陶瓷膜的新方法，以显著降低制造成本。膜过滤正成为饮用水处理的重要工艺。这种增长很大程度上是由于低成本聚合物膜的发展，它可以在经济上与传统的水处理方法竞争。陶瓷膜可用于达到与聚合物膜相同的水质水平，具有几个明显的优点：陶瓷膜提供更高的通量，更低的污染率，更长的使用寿命，更少的完整性问题。从历史上看，由于制造成本高，陶瓷膜没有与传统方法或聚合物膜竞争。最近的发展抵消了高昂的制造成本，使得陶瓷在一些市场上与聚合物具有竞争力。通过发展所提出的创新，陶瓷膜组件的成本将进一步降低，使陶瓷比目前使用的聚合物膜具有优势。在水处理中增加膜的使用将为90%从社区供水系统取水的美国人带来更安全的饮用水。对于采用陶瓷膜的水系统，将有更少的成本，维护和系统完整性故障的担忧。此外，该项目开发的技术将适用于所有食品、饮料、化工、制药、能源、废水和水应用的陶瓷微滤和超滤膜。需要坚固膜的节能分离工艺将变得更加经济可行，有可能降低每年工业分离消耗的4500 T Btu能源。

The Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project seeks to develop a novel approach for fabrication of ceramic membranes that would provide a significant reduction in fabrication costs. Membrane filtration is becoming an important process for drinking water treatment. Much of this growth is due to development of low-cost polymeric membranes that can compete economically with traditional methods of water treatment. Ceramic membranes can be used to achieve the same level of water quality as provided by polymeric membranes, with several distinct advantages: ceramic membranes provide higher fluxes, reduced fouling rates, and longer lifetimes with fewer integrity issues. Historically, ceramic membranes have not been competitive with traditional methods or polymeric membranes due to high manufacturing costs. Recent developments that offset the high manufacturing costs have allowed ceramics to be competitive with polymerics in some markets. By developing the proposed innovation, ceramic membrane module cost will be further reduced, giving ceramics an advantage over currently employed polymeric membranes.Increased membrane usage in water treatment will lead to safer drinking water for the 90% of Americans that receive their water from community water systems. For the water systems that employ ceramic membranes, there will be less cost, maintenance, and concerns of system integrity failures. Additionally, the technology developed in this program would be applicable to ceramic microfiltration and ultrafiltration membranes for all food, beverage, chemicals, pharmaceutical, energy, wastewater, and water applications. Energy efficient separation processes requiring robust membranes would become more economically viable, potentially lowering the 4,500 T Btu of energy consumed annually for industrial separations.