Microwave synthesis of high-quality mordenite membrane by a two-stage varying heating-rate procedure

Abstract High performance mordenite membranes were successfully prepared on porous α-Al2O3 tubes by a novel two-stage varying heating-rate procedure under microwave assisted heating. The effect of heating rate on microstructure and performance of mordenite membrane was first time to be investigated. It was found that slowing down the heating rate at lower temperature range can improve the nucleation process, and further enhance compactness as well as performance of mordenite membrane. Crystallization time was also optimized for the preparation of high-quality mordenite membrane and it was reduced to only 75 min in this work. The as-synthesized M14 exhibits an excellent PV performance for dehydration of 90 wt% acetic acid/water mixture at 75 °C with a flux of 1.48 kg m−2 h−1 and a separation factor of larger than 10,000, which shows an excellent potential for dehydration of acetic acid aqueous solutions in industrial separation applications. Our work also provides a new idea for regulating microstructure and performance of zeolite membrane.