Adsorption of nano-sized nickel on ceramic membrane in membrane filtrating process

The static adsorption and dynamic deposition of nano-sized nickel on the surface of the inorganic flat sheet ceramic membrane were investigated. The experiments referring to the effect of the concentration of nano-sized nickel suspension, temperature, time and membrane pore size on the nano-sized nickel adsorption were carried out, meanwhile the static adsorption and dynamic deposition data were measured. The results show that the static adsorption isotherm accords with Langmuir isothermal adsorption model, and the amount of adsorbed nano-sized nickel via static adsorption increases rapidly with the increase of time and feed concentration in the first few minutes, after that the increase rate slow down and finally the adsorbed amount tends to be stable. In the cross-flow filtration process, the deposition of nano-sized nickel increases rapidly with increasing the feed concentration and time, while it makes the steady flux decreases at the same time. It is found that the ceramic membrane with pore size of 0.3-0.8 μm is suitable to be used to filtrate nickel suspension with the mean particle size of 60 nm, for it has the least adsorbed amount of nano-sized nickel on membrane surface and the highest steady flux.