Reactive sintering and particle morphology control of β″-alumina-based water purification filters

This paper reports on the preparation of porous membranes consisting of plate-like β″-alumina grains and the evaluation for microfiltration properties. Porous β″-alumina-based ceramics were prepared by the solid-state reactive sintering of Na2CO3 and α-Al2O3 at 1100–1300 °C. To study the effect of impurities in the starting powder mixtures, LiF-doped membranes were also prepared. As for the water filtration test, the turbidity before and after the vacuum filtration was measured using sintered porous membranes. To simulate bacteria-contaminated water, a suspension of a commercial boehmite powder (D50 = 0.7 μm) in distilled water was used. The non-doped samples sintered at 1200 °C were composed of β″-alumina (84 wt%) and β-alumina (16 wt%) grains and showed a good microfiltration performance; the turbidities before and after filtration were 894.4 NTU and 1.46 NTU, respectively.