Response surface methodology for the production of a filter membrane from the combination of sand, PET and salt as a pore-forming agent

Abstract

Plastic waste is increasing every day due to urbanization, population growth and in turn, pollutes the environment. These wastes are considered to be a big problem due to their very low biodegradability and presence in large quantities. A large amount of plastic which is being brought by human activities is discarded or burned which leads to the contamination of the environment and air. Therefore, finding alternative methods of disposing of waste by using kind approaches is becoming a major research issue. In this research, polyethene terephthalate waste is used as a binder by burning and mixing with sand and sodium carbonate to investigate the possibility of producing composite material with a plastic sand filter and study the effect of sand, polyethene terephthalate waste and porogen with different design mix ratio on the properties of the product. An experimental design plan was adopted to formulate the materials. To fabricate this material, the melt moulding/particulate leaching technique was used, in which the components are mixed in their respective proportions, moulded, melted and afterwards leached to remove the porogen. We obtained an optimum of 31.0711% porosity for the optimum mixture containing proportions of 0.5, 0.25 and 0.25 plastic sand and porogen respectively. An improved melt/moulding particulate leaching technique was used to improve the permeability and reduce pore sizes of the optimum. This technique involved using a saturated solution of porogen instead of using the porogen in particulate form. The microbial cut-off efficacy of the material was evaluated, in which microbiological analyses were used to enumerate the number of microbes in a lake water sample before and after filtration through the porous material. The results of viable cell counting showed that the material eliminated 92.6% of the water microbes analysed.