Preparation And Enhanced Modification Of Coal-based Flat Carbon Membranes

The coal-based carbon membrane, a novel inorganic membrane, prepared through pulverized coal, mixing with additives, forming, drying and carbonization. Comparing to the traditional organic polymer membranes, coal-based carbon membranes possess high chemical stability, high temperature durability, excellent acid and base tolerance and good mechanical strength. Additionally, compared with other inorganic membranes, they have advantages in high conductivity, low cost of raw materials, and compatibility in basic environment. Therefore, coal-based carbon membranes are experiencing a rapid development in the field of water treatment and liquid separation in recent years. However, the brittle nature of the coal based carbon membranes hindered their application seriously.This work aims to reinforce the mechanical strength of the coal-based carbon membranes by adopting different types of coal and additives, and introducing carbon fibers; thus coal-based carbon membranes with excellent mechanical strength has successfully prepared. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) is used to characterize their microstructures. The results shown that: after optimizing the experimental parameters, the prepared coal-based flat carbon membranes display smooth surfaces, rich porous structures, uniform distribution of pore sizes, and excellent mechanical strength and conductivity. The influences of membrane thickness and the pretreatment parameter of carbon fiber and net on the performance of coal-based flat carbon membrane are also studied in detail. The results show that the addition of carbon fiber can effectively reduce the brittleness of carbon membrane, but the overloading of the carbon fiber, which in turn can reduce the compressive strength of carbon membrane.In addition, as a typical the electrocatalytic membrane materials, the coal based carbon membrane reactor couple with electro catalytic oxidation technology has been constructed, and the electrocatalytic performances enhanced through loading of TiO2 catalyst with the coal based carbon membrane as support. The resulted membrane reactor had been applied to electrocatalytic oxidation treatment of phenol wastewater. The results show that: the prepared carbon membrane reactor display high the current utilization rate and when coal membrane thickness is 10mm, COD removal rate reaches more than 89%.