The water pollution problem has been a concerning issue faced by many countries throughout the world. Adsorption and membrane separation are two promising technologies to help remove pollutants from water bodies. From a technical perspective, ceramic membranes have a great potential to play a key role in the pollutant removal process because of their great chemical and mechanical stability. However, the high capital investment costs of ceramic
membranes especially nanofiltration ones hinder their applicability in water treatment. Coating graphene oxide (GO) membranes, which have “pore sizes” in the nanofiltration range, on the relatively low-cost microfiltration ceramic membrane could be a way to reduce the overall membrane cost. However, due to their long diffusional path, GO membranes are suffered from low permeability, which needs to be improved to enhance their practical applicability. Metal-organic framework (MOF) is an attractive porous material for the adsorption of pollutants. However, they are usually produced in a fine powder form which requires further modulation into bulk bodies to enable their applicability in practical water treatments. Raschig Ring could be a platform for the anchoring of the MOF particles. However, conventional Raschig Rings
are non-porous and have relatively small surface areas per volume, limiting the amount of MOFs that could be loaded on them.
This thesis aimed to tackle these problems in three steps. Firstly, an investigation was conducted to find out the optimum synthesis condition for the production of porous Raschig Rings/ microfiltration membranes which were then produced as substrates. Secondly, a mild chemical etching method was utilised to create pores on the surface of GO nanosheets. These pores worked as additional diffusional entrances when GO nanosheets were processed into
membranes onto ceramic substrates, which greatly enhanced the performance of the membrane. Lastly, MIL-53 MOF adsorbent was grown on the porous Raschig Rings in a novel way that made use of the alumina Raschig Ring as both metal source and substrate. Their great re-generability and re-synthesisbility demonstrated the promising potential of the MIL-53 Raschig Ring in practical water treatment application.