Sustainable Ceramic Membrane for Water Decontamination

Heliyon 9 2023 e13321 Available online 29 January 2023 24058440 2023 The Authors Published by Elsevier Ltd This is an open access article under the CC BYNCND license httpcreativecommonsorglicensesbyncnd40 Research article Sustainable ceramic membrane for decontamination of water A costeffective approach Mamta Latwal a Shefali Arora a Abhishek Joshi a Md Irfan a Ganesh Pandey b a Department of Chemistry University of Petroleum and Energy Studies Dehradun 248007 Uttarakhand India b School of Agriculture Dev Bhoomi Uttarakhand University Dehradun 248007 Uttarakhand India A R T I C L E I N F O Keywords Ceramic membrane Water purification Costeffective filter Biological oxygen demand Chemical oxygen demand A B S T R A C T A sustainable ceramic membrane embedded with silver has been developed using quartz kaolin and calcium carbonate All the chemicals involved in this process were commonly available non toxic and cheap The process was very simple convenient and does not involve any wastage of water Decoration of silver particles onto the porous ceramic membrane with the help of APTES as a connecting molecule leads to the formation of a durable material having strong antibacterial capacity The fabricated membrane holds wide pore morphology with pore size of 44 μm and average porosity of 195 with an estimated cost of fabrication of about 60 dollarm2 The membrane was found capable in reducing the TDS BOD and COD of water samples that confirms that it is efficient for water treatment applications 1 Introduction Worlds first and foremost medicine is pure water Four important characteristics quality quantity reliability and cost makes any purification method effective Water acts as the regulator of all body functions Various developing and undeveloped countries are going with the problem of impure drinking water and facing many water borne diseases Impure water causes various critical diseases which might not be noticed immediately but longterm exposure has been led to cardiovascular and other diseases 12 A sustainable and costeffective supply of clean drinking water is one of the major needs of living beings Several practices have been developed for water purification including both physical and chemical methods 37 Membrane technology is best one for elimination or reduction of various salts bacteria and heavy metals In present time various water treatment technologies such as reverse osmosis UV disin fection media filtration and demineralization are in trends but again there is an issue with its capital cost operating cost and wastage of water for purification 8 For portable water this process is not cost effective one Therefore there is a need to find economic and effective water treatment methods Appropriate water treatment technology can be developed using membrane technology or nanotechnology Lowcost polymeric membranes have been applied for bacterial removal from portable water 9 The drinking water production which basically aims at removing turbidity in the form of suspended and colloidal material involves a variety of chemicals In recent times there is a wide application of aluminum salt and synthetic organic polymer such as polyacryl amide derivatives and polyethylene amine for water treatment 1011 These organic polymers contain residual monomers which are highly undesirable because of their neurotoxicity 1214 Ceramic membranes are favorable over these polymeric membranes because they have longer life with less replacement and lower operational cost 15 Ceramic membranes are made up of inorganic materials and have shown Corresponding author Email address mamtalatwalgmailcom M Latwal Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Heliyon journal homepage wwwcellcomheliyon httpsdoiorg101016jheliyon2023e13321 Received 22 August 2022 Received in revised form 9 December 2022 Accepted 27 January 2023 Heliyon 9 2023 e13321 2 extreme potential applications in tough conditions also such as high temperature extreme pH values etc 1618 In the last decade researchers have explored various types of lowcost ceramic membranes for water treatment applications 1922 However the development of sustainable costeffective and energy efficient technology for water purification in rural areas is still challenging Due to its high mechanical stability cost effectiveness and chemical and thermal stability kaolin based ceramic mem brane proved to be very effective for making ceramic membrane 23 Since quantity and quality of water both are equally important There are limitations in every individual treatment technology so water purification system in rural areas is chosen according to affordability acceptability and raw water characteristics Therefore we can assume that ceramic membrane coated with silver will prove to be a costeffective and efficient membrane for portable water purification in rural areas 2 Experimental 21 Material selection Raw material selected for this work includes kaolin quartz and calcium carbonate in a fixed ratio of 211 g respectively Kaolin and Quartz were procured from CDH India Calcium carbonate was collected from SRL India These three raw materials used in present work for preparation of membrane served for their special characteristic properties Kaolin helped in giving low plasticity and high refractory properties to the membrane Quartz was used to increase mechanical strength and thermal stability of the membrane and calcium carbonate as a pore forming agent Analytical grade AgNO3 998 SRL ethylene glycol 99 Renkem poly vinylpyrolidone PVP K90 CDH and 3aminopropyltriethoxysilane APTES aqueous solution 98 SRL were used as reactants for the coating of membrane with silver All these raw materials were used as received 22 Preparation of membrane The whole mechanism for this purpose included mixing powdering sieving hydraulic pressing drying sintering of the raw material to get the desired membrane The membrane was prepared using a welldefined method 24 Quartz kaolin and calcium carbonate were used in different ratios for different membranes These raw materials were mixed in a ball mill at 40 rpm for 20 min then the resulting powder was sieved using 30 mesh standard screen The required amount was then pressed in a stainlesssteel mold to get a diskshaped membrane Hydraulic pressure in the range 2040 MPa was given for the membranes Ceramic membranes of di ameters 40 mm with different heights were prepared Then the prepared membranes were dried for 24 h at 110 C for complete removal of loose moisture The membranes were finally sintered at a temperature between 900 and 1000 C for 6 h in a muffle furnace with a heating rate of 2 Cmin To obtain a flat surface the membrane was polished using silicon carbide abrasive paper 23 Fixation of silver nanoparticles to the membrane Synthesis of colloidal solution of silver nanoparticles was performed using a reported method 25 The process involved firstly the formation of AgNO3 and polyvinylpyrolidone PVP solutions separately in 10 ml ethylene glycol For this purpose AgNO3 0017 g and PVP 0022 g were used and the solutions were vigorously stirred for 10 min The AgNO3 solution was then dropwise added to PVP solution and the product solution was vigorously stirred for 4 h at room temperature A brownish colored colloidal solution of silver was obtained Originally membranes surface channels were reformed with amino group by immersing it in a 1 ethanol so lution of APTES for 30 min at room temperature Then the porous ceramic membrane was washed with ethanol and treated in a vacuum oven at 100 C for 2 h to allow full condensation of APTES molecules onto the membrane Now this porous ceramic membrane was absorbed in the already prepared colloidal solution of silver for 24 h Afterwards the membrane was washed with ethanol to detach all unbounded particles from its surface A light pinkishwhite colored membrane was gained which was further dried to perform further characterization and measurements 24 Characterization of membrane The morphological and structural assessment of prepared ceramic membrane was performed by Xray diffraction analysis XRD Philips PW114090 and field emission Scanning Electron Microscopy FESEM Quanta 200 The total porosity of the prepared membrane was evaluated by Archimedes principle using the relation ε w2 w1 w1 1 where w1 and w2 are the weights of dry and wet membranes in g respectively For this purpose the membrane was firstly dried in a hot air oven at 110 C for 6 h to obtain its dry weight The it was immersed in water for 24 h at room temperature and its surface was wiped with tissue paper Then the weight of wet membrane was measured Fouriertransform infrared FTIR spectra were recorded using KBr films in a PerkinElmer spectrophotometer M Latwal et al Heliyon 9 2023 e13321 3 25 Water permeation studies A selfdesigned filtration setup having dead end was designed as shown in Fig 1 and used for water permeation experiments The setup was made up of stainless steel 300 mL capacity consisting of a circular base plate to keep the membrane in leakproof condition during direct flow of water Afterwards Ag coated ceramic membrane was used to treat different water samples for various physi ochemical parameters like Total Dissoved Solids TDS Chemical oxygen demand COD and Biological oxygen demand BOD Two water samples were taken in this study namely a local river water sample and tap water sample Water sample from a home RO purifier was also tested for better comparison of the tested parameters For measuring COD the water sample was titrated against ferrous ammonium sulphate solution and the end point was measured For BOD measurements water sample was pipetted out into a BOD bottle containing aerated dilution water After determining DO content the bottle was incubated in dark for five days at 20 C At the end of fifth day the final DO content was determined and the difference between the final and initial DO reading was calculated The decrease in DO is corrected for sample dilution and represents the BOD of the water sample 3 Results and discussion 31 Morphology A typical XRD pattern of porous ceramic membrane is shown in Fig 2 Crystal characterization studies have revealed that after sintering the membrane the peak corresponding to kaolin disappears due to the transformation of kaolinite to metakaolinite 24 On the other hand the peaks corresponding to quartz are not changed in the entire XRD patterns which confirm the thermal stability of the phase The XRD pattern of present study was consistent with the previous study therefore the sintering temperature between 9001000 C taken in this work is justified 24 A digital photograph of prepared membrane is shown in Fig 3 The ceramic membrane was white initially and after decorating it with silver particles the colour turned to light pinkishwhite The colour depends on the size of Agparticles and it arises due to particles capacity of absorption of light those adhere to the membranes channel wall The decorated membrane was incubated in an atmospheric environment for several weeks and no loss in the morphology was detected The FESEM images of blank ceramic and Agdecorated ceramic membrane is shown in Fig 4 It shows uniform embedment of silver particles throughout the ceramic membrane The difference in pore size can easily be seen in the images and the average pore size was 44 μm The total porosity of the fabricated membrane obtained from equation 1 is 195 32 Spectral studies FTIR analysis confirmed the connection between APTES and Ag particles Fig 5 The FTIR spectra of pure APTES is shown in Fig 5 a and that of Ag particles coordinated APTES is shown in Fig 5b The weak bands appearing at 3368 cm1 and 3297 cm1 in Fig 5 a and broad band appearing at 33516 cm1 in Fig 5b corresponds to NH stretching vibrations 26 For the APTES coordinated Ag particles the band was intense and broad owing to the formation of NAg coordinate bonds Fig 5b This result clearly confirms that Fig 1 Experimental setup for filtration test M Latwal et al Heliyon 9 2023 e13321 4 there is an interaction between the nitrogen of APTES molecule NH2 group and Ag particles The broad and intense peaks at 29742879 cm1 in both the spectra are due to CH2 group asymmetric stretching and symmetric stretching vibrations These peaks are little deformed in AgAPTES spectra due to the interaction between NH2 group of carbon chain and Ag particles 27 The empty orbital Fig 2 XRD pattern of porous ceramic membrane Fig 3 Silver decorated porous ceramic membrane Fig 4 FESEM images of a blank ceramic and b Agdecorated ceramic membrane M Latwal et al Heliyon 9 2023 e13321 5 of silver and lone pair of nitrogen facilitates the coordination of Ag with APTES On the other hand APTES molecules can be fixed to the channel surface of porous ceramics 28 This type of connection confirms that the Ag particles remain tightly adhered to the membranes interior channel walls to release an adequate amount of Ag ions for antibiosis This type of Agceramic membrane will be effective in purification of drinking water 33 Water treatment studies Permeation of water samples through the synthesized membrane using a selfdesigned system showed promising results for the efficacy of the membrane intended for purification of water Biological oxygen demand and Chemical oxygen demand of water both determines the amount of organic matter present in water former determining the oxygen utilized by microorganisms in its oxidation The results of water treatment studies for 2 different water samples are shown in Table 1 The average value of the treated water samples for TDS BOD and COD was found to be within the permissible limit of Water Quality Standards for drinking water According to WHO the permissible limit of TDS BOD and COD is 300 mgL 3 mgL and 25 mgL respectively These results shows that the treated water from synthesized ceramic membrane is effective in reducing TDS BOD and COD of water It is very clear from these results that the ceramic membrane can effectively purify water making it suitable for drinking and other purposes 4 Conclusion Decoration of silver particles onto the porous ceramic membrane with the help of APTES as a connecting molecule leads to the formation of a durable material having strong antibacterial capacity As the chemicals involved in this process were commonly available nontoxic and cheap and the method was also very simple convenient low cost and do not involve any wastage of water The fabricated membrane holds wide pore morphology with pore size of 44 μm and average porosity of 195 Based on retail cost of materials used electric and labor cost etc the average cost of the fabricated membrane has been estimated to be about 60 dollarm2 The fabricated membrane is less expensive as compared with the commercially available and previously reported membranes 29 used for gravity fed applications for water filtration Being synthesized from kaolin and quartz the membrane possesses high me chanical strength The membrane was also found capable in reducing the TDS BOD and COD of water samples that confirms that it is efficient for water purification Therefore a water filter incorporating this lowcost ceramic membrane will prove to be very beneficial for people of rural areas who cannot afford expensive filters It can also be analyzed for other water treatment applications Author contribution statement Mamta Latwal Conceived and designed the experiments Analyzed and interpreted the data Contributed reagents materials Fig 5 FTIR spectra of a APTES pure and b Ag coordinated APTES Table 1 Values of studied parameters of different water samples Water samples TDS mgL BOD mgL COD mgL River water Untreated 325 721 82 Treated 110 31 20 Tap water Untreated 225 789 70 Treated 69 292 12 Water filter RO 80 28 8 M Latwal et al Heliyon 9 2023 e13321 6 analysis tools or data Wrote the paper Shefali Arora Analyzed and interpreted the data Wrote the paper Abhishek Joshi Md Irfan Performed 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