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Article Navigation >  Green Energy&Environment  > 2025  > Accepted Manuscript
Yuanhui Gao, Dong Zou, Ze-xian Nicholas Low, Zhaoxiang Zhong, Weihong Xing. 3D-printing enables geometry-optimized ceramic membranes with minimizing mass transfer resistance for environmental application. Green Energy&Environment. doi: 10.1016/j.gee.2025.12.004
Citation: Yuanhui Gao, Dong Zou, Ze-xian Nicholas Low, Zhaoxiang Zhong, Weihong Xing. 3D-printing enables geometry-optimized ceramic membranes with minimizing mass transfer resistance for environmental application. Green Energy&Environment. doi: 10.1016/j.gee.2025.12.004
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3D-printing enables geometry-optimized ceramic membranes with minimizing mass transfer resistance for environmental application

doi: 10.1016/j.gee.2025.12.004

  • a. National Engineering Research Center for Special Separation Membrane, College of Chemical Engineering, Nanjing Tech University, Nanjing, 211816, China;

  • b. School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Nanjing Tech University, Nanjing, 211816, China;

  • c. Suzhou Laboratory, Suzhou 215000, PR China

Funds:

D Program of Jiangsu Province (BE2023030).

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (22325804, 22578197 and 22208145), Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions of China (No. 25KJA530003), Jiangsu Future Membrane Technology Innovation Center (No. BM2021804) and The Key R&

  • Received date 10 September 2025, Accepted date 11 December 2025, RevRecd date 02 November 2025, Available online 18 December 2025
    Abstract
  • Membrane separation technology, with its features of high efficiency and environmental sustainability, is playing an increasingly important role in the field of energy conservation and emission reduction. Membrane structure design has shown high advantages in reducing mass transfer resistance and enhancing separation efficiency. In this study, 3D printing technology was employed to fabricate a direct-channel structured alumina-mullite ceramic membrane to enhance membrane separation efficiency. A ceramic slurry was used as raw material to precisely manufacture ceramic membrane as the digital model, achieving high curing depth of 200 μm and low curing width of 50 μm. Moreover, in-situ mullite reaction was employed to form sintering necks among ceramic particles to enhance the bending strength. The effects of solid content and sintering temperature on the membrane properties were systematically investigated. When the solid content was 75 wt% and sintering temperature was 1400 °C, the ceramic membrane with conventional structure exhibited a pore size of 1.1 μm and pure water flux of 1698 L/(m2·h·bar). In contrast, the direct-channel structured ceramic membrane exhibited a high pure water flux of 4700 L/(m2·h·bar), which was ∼3 times higher than those of the conventional ones. This improvement of permeability could be attributed to the optimized mass transfer process that was confirmed via computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation. To demonstrate the potential application of this ceramic membrane in the environmental sustainability, oil/water emulsion separation was taken as an example. The membrane demonstrated high separation efficiency of above 99% and a stable water permeance of 130 L/(m2·h·bar) during oil/water emulsion filtration. This work provides a fundamental basis to advance the development of structurally designed ceramic membranes for environmental sustainability.

     

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