Membrane filtration, such as ultrafiltration (UF) and microfiltration (MF), have been increasingly adopted for both drinking water and wastewater treatment for water reuse to combat the ever worsening global water scarcity. They guarantee the production of safe and high quality waters that are consistently free of bacteria and low in virus counts, ensuring the safety of drinking water and recycled water. Although polymer-based membranes are the dominant player at the time being, there is clear projection that ceramic membranes are becoming the main competitor in the very near future. Ceramic membranes have been demonstrated to much outperform the polymeric counterparts in mechanical, chemical and thermal stability, and therefore achieve much longer service life at reduced maintenance and overall production cost, as well as produce high quality water.
In Singapore, part of the water treatment system in the Choa Chu Kang Water Works is being upgraded with ceramic membranes, which will make the plant more operationally efficient and reliable.1 When completed in 2018, it will have a daily capacity of 40 million gallons per day. The new CeraMac® plant will be one of the largest ceramic membrane plants for drinking water treatment in the world. More recently, Singapore Government has announced to make an investment of $200 million into water research over the next five years, in an effort to mitigate the effects of climate change and ensure that Singapore becomes more self-sufficient in water supply. It is projected that the water industry will contribute $2.85 billion to Singapore’s gross domestic product (GDP) and create 15,000 jobs by 2020.2
In a timely response to the fast and increasing demand for advanced ceramic membranes, which will be a key contribution to Singapore’s national initiative in water research, we propose to develop the next generation ceramic membranes with disruptively improved performance with the following specific objectives:
- To develop ceramic membranes with newly engineered mesoporous gradient structure and conical-shaped meso-/nano-pores for high filtration flux, antifouling property and overall superior performance, in contrast to those widely used asymmetric structure with discrete double/triple layers;
- To establish a novel fabrication technique of effectively combining nano-particles and templated sol-gel processes to produce the mesoporous gradient structure and conical-shaped pores, at the lowered production cost;
- To develop a new surface micro-patterning approach to fabricate antifouling ceramic membranes, which is one of the key challenges in the maintenance and operation cost of water and wastewater treatment; and
- To build up the desperately needed technical base for advanced ceramic membranes and to train manpower in membrane fabrication, as well as those for environmental, chemical, food and beverage industries.
Nhan Phan-Thien's Research & Innovation 