Crack-free whisker-reinforced hierarchical Al2O3-based membranes via co-sintering for industrial wastewater treatment

The rational design of long-lifetime and low-energy-consumption ceramic membranes is challenging, especially for the sustainable treatment of industrial wastewater to solve environmental pollution issues. In this work, a whisker reinforcement strategy is proposed to fabricate gradient composite ceramic membranes with enhanced interfacial bonding strength. The introduction of a whisker intermediate layer effectively mitigates the cracking and deformation issues caused by mismatched shrinkage between membrane layers during co-sintering. The resulting composite ceramic membrane exhibits an average pore size of 95 nm and a permeance of 1340 L m −2 h −1 bar −1 . The membrane exhibits a rejection rate of 99.6% for carbon particle suspensions and maintains a permeance recovery ratio of 85% after six separation-backwashing cycles. This work provides a promising and cost-effective strategy for the design of highly stable composite ceramic membranes, paving the way for their practical application in industrial wastewater treatment.