Crystar Ceramic Membrane Filters for water and wastewater treatment
Many global authorities have been raising the regulatory requirements on wastewater disposal, making it mandatory for many industrial facilities to build dedicated treatment facilities onsite or upgrade the exisiting ones. This is driven by economical and environmental necessity, with hydric stresses reaching critical levels across the world.
The aim of wastewater treatment is to remove contaminants so that the water can be safely disposed to sewage, returned to the water cycle or reused. These initiatives are central to reducing water scarcity and ensuring that the growing global population can access safe, clean water. Alongside sedimentation, flotation, chemical and biological processes; filtration is one of the key steps by which this is achieved.
Introducing Crystar® Ceramic Membrane Filters
Crystar®ceramic membranes are high-performance filters developed to tackle the most difficult water filtration applications and to reduce the cost and environmental footprint of existing water treatment processes
Crystar® ceramic membrane filters are based on our advanced recrystallized silicon carbide (R-SiC) ceramic technology. This special grade of silicon carbide is produced by a sublimation/condensation process at temperatures over 2,000 °C. The process eliminates nano-particles and creates a microstructure with excellent permeability to various fluids.
The result: our ceramic membrane filters provide outstanding filtration characteristics in terms of retention efficiency and permeate flux, while also exhibiting excellent durability against extreme temperatures, high loads and aggressive chemicals. Built to resist corrosion and remain functional even in the most challenging conditions, Crystar® ceramic membrane filters are a comprehensive solution for virtually any demanding microfiltration application where polymeric membranes (or even other ceramic membranes) as well as other traditional filtration technologies fail.
Crossflow Membranes for Aggressive Effluents
Crystar® crossflow ceramic membrane filters consist of multi-layers of high purity R-SiC supported by an ultra-permeable carrier also made from porous R-SiC.
By carefully controlling the silicon carbide microstructure, we can ensure that these ceramic membrane filters can consistently and reliably achieve the required filtration efficiency, either to retain contaminants or to recover high value products.
These membranes provide high permeate fluxes, hence allowing for more compact filtration installations. They can be operated at low pressures and low recirculation speed, reducing energy consumption. Thanks to their unmatched thermal shock resistance and corrosion resistance, our ceramic membrane filters enable fast and effective clean-in-place (CIP) cycles. The specific surface chemistry of silicon carbide reduces the fouling propensity of the membrane against bacteria, proteins and oils and makes the backwash process more efficient.
See our crossflow filter datasheet for more information on these ceramic membrane filters.
Dead-End Membranes for Municipal water and Wastewater Applications
Our dead-end ceramic membrane filters combine R-SiC membrane layers and carrier in a monolith honeycomb geometry.
The internal structure, consisting of alternately plugged channels, has been carefully designed to provide a large filtration area within an extremely compact package. Alternately plugged channels within the structure mean that the flow paths for feed and permeate streams are well-defined, resulting in an extremely compact filtration solution that is ideally suited to filter water or wastewater at high throughput.
Crystar® dead-end ceramic membrane filters ensure very low operating pressures (typically below 1 bar / 14 PSI) and easy and fast backwashes (10-60 liters of water consumed/filtration element, 3 seconds duration). Dramatically reduced footprint and operating costs compared to other filtration technologies such as polymeric ultrafiltration membranes and sand filters make Crystar® dead-end ceramic membrane filters the filtration solution of choice for municipal water and wastewater treatment applications.
Different pore size options allow Crystar® dead-end ceramic membrane filters to be tuned to different use cases. Choose either HiFlo membranes with a 4 μm pore size for balanced productivity and permeate quality, or HiPur filters with a 0.25 μm pore size for uncompromising filtrate quality.
To find out more about how Crystar® ceramic membrane filters can help you save energy and achieve better filtration quality in demanding applications, get in touch with a member of the Saint Gobain Crystar® team today.
