SBIR Phase II: Low-cost Ceramic Membranes for Drinking Water Treatment

The Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project seeks to develop a novel approach for fabrication of ceramic membranes that would provide a significant reduction in fabrication costs. Membrane filtration is becoming an important process for drinking water treatment. Much of this growth is due to development of low-cost polymeric membranes that can compete economically with traditional methods of water treatment. Ceramic membranes can be used to achieve the same level of water quality as provided by polymeric membranes, with several distinct advantages: ceramic membranes provide higher fluxes, reduced fouling rates, and longer lifetimes with fewer integrity issues. Historically, ceramic membranes have not been competitive with traditional methods or polymeric membranes due to high manufacturing costs. Recent developments that offset the high manufacturing costs have allowed ceramics to be competitive with polymerics in some markets. By developing the proposed innovation, ceramic membrane module cost will be further reduced, giving ceramics an advantage over currently employed polymeric membranes. Increased membrane usage in water treatment will lead to safer drinking water for the 90% of Americans that receive their water from community water systems. For the water systems that employ ceramic membranes, there will be less cost, maintenance, and concerns of system integrity failures. Additionally, the technology developed in this program would be applicable to ceramic microfiltration and ultrafiltration membranes for all food, beverage, chemicals, pharmaceutical, energy, wastewater, and water applications. Energy efficient separation processes requiring robust membranes would become more economically viable, potentially lowering the 4,500 T Btu of energy consumed annually for industrial separations.