Industrial separation factors

An analysis to determine the concentration of Cu in an industrial plating bath uses a procedure for which Zn is an interferent. When a sample containing 128.6 ppm Cu is carried through a separation to remove Zn, the concentration of Cu remaining is 127.2 ppm. When a 134.9-ppm solution of Zn is carried through the separation, a concentration of 4.3 ppm remains. Calculate the recoveries for Cu and Zn and the separation factor. 

When use of the ion-exchange separation method developed in this study was considered it was determined from the separation factor calculated from the stability constants 4] of their complexes with EDTA that a column ratio greater than 40 would be needed to separate them. Experiments showed that a column ratio nearly 10 times larger would be needed to affect their separation with CIEC. Theoretically based studies [7-9] led to success in separation Eu and Gd by the use of HPIEC and a binary displacer. This technique has made the separation of Gd and Eu simple and useful enough to warrant its use as an industrial process. 

Tetrahydrofuran, THF, is an important industrial solvent and forms an azeotropic mixture at 5.3 wt% with water (see Table 10.3). To separate water/THF, Li et al. [148] tested the pervaporation performance of different hydrophihc zeolite membranes, zeolite A, zeohte Y, MOR, and ZSM-5. The preliminary test showed that the separation factor increased as the Si/Al ratio of the zeohte decreased, except for the case of zeolite A. This fact is probably due to the lower quality of this membrane with respect to the others since in the permeation of triisopropylbenzene (TIPB), showed the highest flux, 3.1 g/m h, indicating the presence of nonselective defects. Therefore, the best results were obtained with zeolite Y, rendering a separation factor of 300 with a water flux of 2.24 kg/m h at 60°C. The water flux increased with water concentration in the feed, up to a value of 15 wt%, indicating that the zeolite was saturated, as was the same for the case of water/ethanol mixtures in zeolite A, previously described. At the same time, the separation factor decreases as water concentration decreased. The stabihty of the membrane was also studied, showing a stable performance after 35 h of operation. 

Nevertheless, the development of zeolite-membrane reactors still requires improvements in the fluxes and separation factors attained to date, an objective to which many efforts have been devoted in recent years with the aim of materializing an industrial application of zeolite-membrane reactors. Several reviews have been published in the last 5 years dealing completely or partially with zeolite membranes [2,3,5,161,162,165-167]. Particularly, noteworthy have been the advances regarding the use of supports of different natures and characteristics (see Section 10.6.4), the control of the orientation and thickness of zeolite layers (see Section 10.2.1.2), and the preparation of new zeolite materials such as membranes (see Section 10.3). In spite of these advances, before zeolite-membrane reactors are used in industry (see Section 10.6.5), signihcant progress must be achieved in more prosaic issues such as scale-up and control of the synthesis process to increase membrane reproducibility. 

In Table 1, typical extracting reagents used for separation and enrichment of inorganic elements are summarized. Organophosphorus extractants are often used because of their solubility properties. Di(2-ethylhexyl) phosphoric acid is commonly applied to industrial separations because of its high extractability and high separation factors between many inorganic elements, especially for rare earth elements. Other metal ions are extracted as well as the trivalent metal ions. 

Separation of ethylene, benzene, propanol, olefin, aromatic amines from organic liquid mixtures, of volatile organic compounds (VOC) and phenol from wastewater, were investigated (Table 5.11), using a rotating film module, spiral-type FLM, hoUow-fiber and layered LM techniques. High separation factors (>1000) in pUot- and industrial-scale experiments were found. 

Membrane separation is a relatively new and fast-growing field in supramolecular chemistry. It is not only an important process in biological systems, but becomes a large-scale industrial activity. For industrial applications, many synthetic membranes have been developed. Important conventional membrane technologies are microfiltration, ultrafiltration, electro- and hemodialysis, reverse osmosis, and gas separations. The main advantages are the high separation factors that can be achieved under mild conditions and the low energy requirements. 

Ion exchangers are available for laboratory-scale separations, and factors such as cost and reproducibility etc. are not very important. For industrial separation, however, it is necessary to optimize the purification conditions. 

There are some factors affecting the choice of column equipment in order to obtain a good separation. The length of column is necessary more than 30 times the diameter of column, because the resolution increases at the square root of column length. That is why a longer column is used for gel filtration especially for an analytical fractionation. A bed length of more than 1 m is not useful and effective for industrial separation. 

H -I- HD is the only mixture of compounds of hydrogen that has a separation factor as favorable as in conventional industrial distillation. In this case, however, the true separation factor is less favorable than here calculated from the vapor-pressure ratio, because of nonidealities in gaseous and liquid mixtures of hydrogen and HD. Moreover, it is desirable to operate above atmospheric pressure, to preclude in-leakage of air. Under practical conditions, at... 

Table II lists the elements separated in the United Kingdom on an industrial scale, the methods investigated, and the equilibrium separation factors. These separation factors are only indicative in that they vary with actual process parameters.

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