ADDITIVE MANUFACTURING OF FUNCTIONAL CERAMICS STRUCTURES IN THE FIELDS OF WATER TREATMENT

Abstract

Additive Manufacturing, especially 3D printing technology, creates the possibility to produce any design with various types of materials, including ceramics material that has high strength, high-temperature endurance, and is chemically inert. These valuable properties can be used for water treatment applications to produce clean water or decontaminate polluted water, i.e., solar desalination and oil/water separation. This work contains three sections. The first section details the formulation of a stable ceramic paste to fabricate 3D-printed porous ceramic structures and an efficient ceramic wick. The following section focuses on fabricating a portable ceramic solar desalination device to produce WHO-standard clean water using the proprietary ceramic paste. The last part of the work focuses on the oil/water separation using a 3D printed ceramic filter with the introduction of a novel device to simultaneously separate oil and water in continuous flow.