Preparation and Characterization of Sintered Microporous Polymeric Filters

Nowadays filtration process is increasingly used in various areas such as water purification, food industries, filtering the air dust and other separation applications. In this work, the HDPE microporous filters have been fabricated at different pressure and time conditions via sintering process and then were characterized by different techniques. It can be expected that microstructure and mechanical properties of the samples could be controlled by changing the fabrication parameters like temperature, pressure, time of the process and also by changing the properties of the resin such as powder shape, particle size and rheological properties. In the first step, by using DSC, MFI, rheology test and optical microscope, the most suitable polymeric powder for sintering process was chosen. The sintering temperature was fixed in the vicinity of melting temperature of the used HDPE powder, based on DSC result. In order to evaluate mechanical properties and porosity of the samples, the results obtained from the shear punch test, acetone drop permeability, gas permeability, transition optical microscopy and SEM, have been used; then the effect of pressure and time parameters on the characteristics of the product has been studied. Finally, it was concluded that it is possible to make microporous filters with suitable mechanical properties, using sintering process at controlled pressure and temperature conditions.It can be seen that by increasing time and pressure, on the one hand the mechanical properties of the products increase, and on the other hand, their porosity and the gas permeability of the vents decrease.