Preparation and characterization of low cost flat ceramic membranes from easily available potters’ clay for dye separation

In the present day scenario, the crisis of safe drinking water is an extremely serious issue across many parts of the globe and needs efficient methods to overcome this problem. The effort made in this study is to develop a method to prepare a ceramic membrane with locally available cheap compositions such as potters’ clay, stone dust and tea waste materials for efficient adsorptive dye removal from water. The preparation of ceramic membrane was carried out by a paste pressing method and sintered at an optimized temperature of $$900{^\circ }\hbox {C}$$ to obtain flat ceramic membranes of 42 mm in diameter and $$3 \pm 0.5~\hbox {mm}$$ thickness with good thermal and chemical stabilities with 52.51% porosity and average pore size of $$0.49~\upmu \hbox {m}$$ . The membrane was capable of decolouring methylene blue and congo red from water with good efficiency and the used membrane was regenerated by calcining at $$400{^\circ }\hbox {C}$$ for 30 min without much loss of its efficiency. Development of newer advanced products with the available local resources may be another way to sustain the small scale industry and livelihood of the people around.