Production of epoxy spherical mesoporous as a spherical membrane separator

• Epoxy spherical membrane was a porous material built from micro-sphere packing.
• It was prepared based on the water in oil in water (W/O/W) technique.
• Spherical membrane is hyperbolic space of the packing and applied for filtration.
• CaCO3 is used as filler, also promoted the emulsifying and enhanced the filtration.

Epoxy spherical membrane (ESM) is a porous epoxy material, a combination of micro-spherical particles. The spherical membrane, built from the space formed among the particles is applied for filtering and separation purposes. ESM was obtained after curing the emulsion of the epoxy mixture (epoxy, polyamide and calcium carbonate (CaCO3)) and water, which was prepared based on the water in oil in water (W/O/W) technique by using a high speed homogenizer. It was found that an increase in CaCO3 content produced smaller spherical epoxy particles and a higher porosity ESM. Therefore, a reduction in compression strength was induced; however, the compression modulus was increased. An ESM column with polypropylene (PP) tubes was applied as the separator column. Using the ESM column, carbon black N330 was successfully separated from the water. They were located at the top of the ESM column and trapped among the epoxy micron particles. ESM-25 possessed the highest flow rate of the water medium, while ESM-50 exhibited the highest weight of carbon black at the top of the membrane and the lowest weight of carbon trapped in the column. The oil–water separation function of ESM was observed using crude oil–water and palm oil–water solutions. Oils travelled slower through the ESM column in comparison to water, so the separation occurred; hence pure water was obtained first followed by the oils. It was found that ESM-25 exhibited the best oil flow rate for palm oil separation, while ESM-50 exhibited the best crude oil separation.

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