Waltham, Mass., April 30, 2010 - CeraMem® ceramic membrane technology, a product offering from Veolia Water Solutions & Technologies, is now available with a new range of silicon carbide membranes.This new line of membranes complements the existing line of CeraMem ceramic oxide membranes employed in microfiltration (MF) and ultrafiltration (UF) applications involving separation of feed streams and/or operating environments not suitable for conventional ceramic and polymeric membrane systems.
Building on the existing features of the current product line, the new silicon carbide membranes tolerate operation across the full pH range from 0-14.They allow routine use of aggressive cleaning methods, such as the use of caustic soda, that are common practice in many industries.This broad range of aqueous chemical stability will provide improved productivity, due to enhanced cleaning and flux maintenance, for applications involving oily wastewaters including deoiling of oilfield produced water, treatment of desalter bottoms, and the treatment of metal working fluids.In addition, these new membranes offer higher membrane permeability, improved abrasion resistance and excellent resistance to thermal shock.The latter being a distinctive feature versus traditional ceramic membranes, and enables rapid and aggressive thermal cleaning to be applied to the new membranes.
The silicon carbide membranes are available in 0.2µm microfiltration and 50nm ultrafiltration pore sizes in both 2mm and 5mm feed channel versions.The new membranes have identical form factors to existing CeraMem oxide membranes that feature a high membrane packing density.