PROCESSING AND CHARACTERIZATION OF MICROFILTRATION SUPPORTS PREPARED FROM ALUMINA POWDERS

Alcoa A-16 SG commercial alumina powder is widely used for the prepara tion of porous supports for alumina membrane layers. In this work, a c omparison is made concerning the use of different alumina powders. For this purpose two types of powders with different physical and chemica l characteristics to Alcoa powder were chosen. The powders of interest were Seydisehir alumina, which is a local alumina produced for metall urgical purposes by the Bayer process, and the granulated form of this alumina obtained by spray-drying. Due to the coarser microstructure o f the substrates prepared from spray-dried powders, the pore size was larger and the amount of the flux was higher than the other two substr ates which were prepared from the processed Seydisehir and Alcoa powde rs in identical conditions.