The ceramic products are extremely interesting in the field of the membrane supports because of their mechanical resistance, chemical inertia, long working life and thermal stability. Research is currently directed towards the exploitation of materials at a lower cost. The aim of this work is to prepare tubular ceramic membranes by extrusion using composition containing ball clays, kaolin and alumina and use different sintering temperatures, to be applied in microfiltration process. The characterization of the ceramic composition was performed before sintering: particles size, thermogravimetric analysis, chemical analysis and X-ray diffraction. The chemical analysis shows large content of SiO2 and Al2O3 and the X-ray result shows the presence of kaolinite, quartz and alumina. The results from X-ray diffraction of the ceramic body after sintering show the presence of mullite, alumina and quartz. The SEM images and the results from mercury porosimetry show the presence of pores for all sintering temperatures and pore size in the range of microfiltration. The results from pure water flux, at steady state, show that the membranes sintered at 1300 ºC present the highest value, followed by the ones sintered at 1250, 1200 and 1150 ºC.
ceramic membranes; raw materials; microfiltration
