Study of ceramic ultrafiltration membrane support based on phosphate industry subproduct: Application for the cuttlefish conditioning effluents treatment

Abstract The development and the characterisation of a new support for ultrafiltration membranes prepared from the mud of the hydro cyclone laundries of phosphate are presented. The choice of this material is based mostly on its low cost (considering its abundance in the Tunisian ores). Indeed, the use of this material for membrane preparation allows a good management of this subproduct which represents a major problem in phosphate transformation industry due to the resulting environmental pollution. Paste from the mud of the hydro cyclone laundries of phosphate was extruded and heated at 900 °C to produce a porous tubular support having an average pore diameter and a porosity of about 1.05 μm and 39%, respectively. The properties regarding to mechanical and chemical resistances are very interesting. The deposition of the ultrafiltration layer from zirconium material was performed by slip-casting method. The heating treatment at 700 °C leads to an average pore size of 5 nm. The determination of the water permeability shows a value of 86 l/h m 2 bar. This membrane can be used for crossflow ultrafiltration. The application of the cuttlefish effluent treatment shows an important decrease of turbidity, inferior to 1.5 NTU and chemical organic demand (COD), retention rate of about 60%. So, it seems that this membrane is suitable to use for wastewater treatment.