Membrane applications membranes

P. Zschocke and D. Quellmatz, Novel ion exchange membranes based on aromatic polysulfone, J. Membr. Sci., 1985, 22, 325 W.H. Daly, Modification of condensation polymers, J. Macromol. Sci., Chem., 1985, A22, 713-728 N. Sivashinsky and G.B. Tanny, Ionic heterogeneities in sulfonated polysulfone films, J. Appl. Polym. Sci., 1983, 28, 3235-3245 M.D. Guiver, G.P. Robertson, M. Yashikawa and C.M. Tam, Funtionalized polysulfone Methods for chemical modification and membrane applications, Membrane Formation and Modification, ACS Symposium Series, ed. I. Pinnau and B.D. Freeman, American Chemical Society, Washington DC, 2000, Vol. 744. 

There are several techniques for preparing membranes the selection of the appropriate method depends on the material and the final membrane application. Membrane properties can be modulated, to a certain extent, by properly choosing the preparation technique and acting on the key process conditions. In Table 1.1, the main membrane materials, preparation techniques, and applications are summarized. PI, the most used membrane preparation technique, is discussed in detail in Section 1.3. The other most used techniques, usually anployed in manbrane preparation, are introduced in this section. 

Advantages to Membrane Separation This subsertion covers the commercially important membrane applications. AU except electrodialysis are pressure driven. All except pervaporation involve no phase change. All tend to be inherently low-energy consumers in the-oiy if not in practice. They operate by a different mechanism than do other separation methods, so they have a unique profile of strengths and weaknesses. In some cases they provide unusual sharpness of separation, but in most cases they perform a separation at lower cost, provide more valuable products, and do so with fewer undesirable side effects than older separations methods. The membrane interposes a new phase between feed and product. It controls the transfer of mass between feed and product. It is a kinetic, not an equihbrium process. In a separation, a membrane will be selective because it passes some components much more rapidly than others. Many membranes are veiy selective. Membrane separations are often simpler than the alternatives. 

Water Splitting A modified electrodi ysis arrangement is used as a means of regenerating an acid and a base from a corresponding salt. For instance, NaCl may be used to produce NaOH and HCl. Water sphtting is a viable alternative to disposal where a salt is produced by neutralization of an acid or base. Other potential applications include the recovery of organic acids from their salts and the treating of effluents from stack gas scrubbers. The new component required is a bipolar membrane, a membrane that sphts water into H and OH". At its simplest, a bipolar membrane may be prepared by... 

Pretreatment For most membrane applications, particularly for RO and NF, pretreatment of the feed is essential. If pretreatment is inadequate, success will be transient. For most applications, pretreatment is location specific. Well water is easier to treat than surface water and that is particularly true for sea wells. A reducing (anaerobic) environment is preferred. If heavy metals are present in the feed even in small amounts, they may catalyze membrane degradation. If surface sources are treated, chlorination followed by thorough dechlorination is required for high-performance membranes [Riley in Baker et al., op. cit., p. 5-29]. It is normal to adjust pH and add antisealants to prevent deposition of carbonates and siillates on the membrane. Iron can be a major problem, and equipment selection to avoid iron contamination is required. Freshly precipitated iron oxide fouls membranes and reqiiires an expensive cleaning procedure to remove. Humic acid is another foulant, and if it is present, conventional flocculation and filtration are normally used to remove it. The same treatment is appropriate for other colloidal materials. Ultrafiltration or microfiltration are excellent pretreatments, but in general they are... 

Brief Examples Microfiltration is the oldest and largest membrane field. It was important economically when other disciphnes were struggling for acceptance, yet because of its incredible diversity and lack of large apphcations, it is the most difficult to categorize. Nonetheless, it has had greater membrane sales than all other membrane applications combined throughout most of its histoiy. The early... 

Gas Dehydration Water is extremely permeable in polymer membranes. Dehydration of air and other gases is a growing membrane application. 

Hydrocomponents Technologies, Inc. Site describes products supplied for commercial, industrial and residential applications membrane production equipment components for manufacturers of reverse osmosis systems. http //www.hcti.com... 

Ultrafiltration utilizes membrane filters with small pore sizes ranging from O.OlS t to in order to collect small particles, to separate small particle sizes, or to obtain particle-free solutions for a variety of applications. Membrane filters are characterized by a smallness and uniformity of pore size difficult to achieve with cellulosic filters. They are further characterized by thinness, strength, flexibility, low absorption and adsorption, and a flat surface texture. These properties are useful for a variety of analytical procedures. In the analytical laboratory, ultrafiltration is especially useful for gravimetric analysis, optical microscopy, and X-ray fluorescence studies. 

Mohr, C.M. Deeper, S.A. Engelgau, D.E. and Charboneau, B.L., Membrane Applications and Research in Food Processing, (Noyes Data Corporation, Park Ridge, NJ) p. 305 (1989). 

A number of studies have recently been devoted to membrane applications [8, 100-102], Yoshikawa and co-workers developed an imprinting technique by casting membranes from a mixture of a Merrifield resin containing a grafted tetrapeptide and of linear co-polymers of acrylonitrile and styrene in the presence of amino acid derivatives as templates [103], The membranes were cast from a tetrahydrofuran (THF) solution and the template, usually N-protected d- or 1-tryptophan, removed by washing in more polar nonsolvents for the polymer (Fig. 6-17). Membrane applications using free amino acids revealed that only the imprinted membranes showed detectable permeation. Enantioselective electrodialysis with a maximum selectivity factor of ca. 7 could be reached, although this factor depended inversely on the flux rate [7]. Also, the transport mechanism in imprinted membranes is still poorly understood. 

Other clinical studies have been focused on the artificial tympanic membrane application, ventilation mbes, an adhesion Barrier, elastic bioactive coatings on load-bearing dental and hip implants, and also for wound healing purposes. ... 

In this chapter, the focus is on how zeohte membranes can be appHed in the field of catalysis and to what extent this is successful. The latter is illustrated by reviewing some commonly studied zeohte membrane applications. Finally, the current hurdles that impede industrial application are discussed and some remarks... 

Fujikawa M, Ano R, Nakao K, Shimizu R and Akamatsu M. Relationships between structure and high-throughput screening permeability of diverse drugs with artificial membranes application to prediction of Caco-2 cell permeability. Bioorg Med Chem 2005 13 4721-32. 

Applications Membranes create a boundary between different bulk gas or hquid mixtures. Different solutes and solvents flow through membranes at different rates. This enables the use of membranes in separation processes. Membrane processes can be operated at moderate temperatures for sensitive components (e.g., food, pharmaceuticals). Membrane processes also tend to have low relative capital and energy costs. Their modular format permits rehable scale-up and operation. This unit operation has seen widespread commercial adoption since the 1960s for component enrichment, depletion, or equilibration. Estimates of annual membrane module sales in 2005 are shown in Table 20-16. Applications of membranes for diagnostic and bench-scale use are not included. Natural biological systems widely employ membranes to isolate cells, organs, and nuclei. 

Membranes UF membranes consist primarily of polymeric structures (polyethersulfone, regenerated cellulose, polysulfone, polyamide, polyacrylonitrile, or various fluoropolymers) formed by immersion casting on a web or as a composite on a MF membrane. Hydrophobic polymers are surface-modified to render them hydrophilic and thereby reduce fouling, reduce product losses, and increase flux [Cabasso in Vltrafiltration Membranes and Applications, Cooper (ed.). Plenum Press, New York, 1980]. Some inorganic UF membranes (alumina, glass, zirconia) are available but only find use in corrosive applications due to their high cost. 

Competing Processes Membranes are not the only way to make these separations, neither are they generally the dominant way. In many applications, membranes compete with cryogenic distillation and with pressure-swing adsorption in others, physical absorption is the dominant method. The growth rate for membrane capacity is higher than that for any competitor. 

Figure 5 shows the diffusion of a solute into such an impermeable membrane. The membrane initially contains no solute. At time zero, the concentration of the solute at z = 0 is suddenly increased to c, and maintained at this level. Equilibrium is assumed at the interface of the solution and the membrane. Therefore, the corresponding membrane concentration at z = 0 is Kc1. Since the membrane is impermeable, the concentration on the other side will not be affected by the change at z = 0 and will still be free of solute. This abrupt increase produces a time-dependent concentration profile as the solute penetrates into the membrane. If the solution is assumed to be dilute, Fick s second law Eq. (9) is applicable ... 

Burgmayer and Murray [40] reported electrically controlled resistance to the transport of ions across polypyrrole membrane. The membrane was formed around a folded minigrid sheet by the anodic polymerization of pyrrole. The ionic resistance, measured by impedance, in 1.0 M aqueous KC1 solution was much higher under the neutral (reduced) state of the polymers than under the positively charged (oxidized) state. The redox state of polypyrrole was electrochemically controlled this phenomenon was termed an ion gate, since the resistance was varied from low to high and vice versa by stepwise voltage application. 

Fig. 14 Water-soluble CCVJ, hydrophobic CCVJ farnesyl ester (FCVJ) for cell membrane applications [88], and hydrophilic CCVJ triethyleneglycol ester (CCVJ-TEG) [89]...

Prabhu, A.K. and S.T. Oyama, Highly hydrogen selective ceramic membranes Application to the transformation of greenhouse gases,. Membr. Sci, 176, 233-248, 2000. 

Van Koten and Frey used a hyperbranched poly(triallylsilane) as the support for palladium- pincer complexes.[63] The supported palladium-pincer complexes were applied in the catalytic aldol condensation of benzaldehyde and methyl isocyanate. Their activity was similar to that of single site Pd catalysts. According to the authors, the complex is suitable for continuous membrane applications, as demonstrated by their purification by means of dialysis. 

Cross-flow filtration systems utilize high liquid axial velocities to generate shear at the liquid-membrane interface. Shear is necessary to maintain acceptable permeate fluxes, especially with concentrated catalyst slurries. The degree of catalyst deposition on the filter membrane or membrane fouling is a function of the shear stress at the surface and particle convection with the permeate flow.16 Membrane surface fouling also depends on many application-specific variables, such as particle size in the retentate, viscosity of the permeate, axial velocity, and the transmembrane pressure. All of these variables can influence the degree of deposition of particles within the filter membrane, and thus decrease the effective pore size of the membrane. 

The membrane-associated small G proteins H-Ras and K-Ras have been studied with respect to their association with cytoplasmic leaflets. These two proteins have nearly identical structures and functions but different membrane anchors, membrane distributions and effector responses. Application of the FRAP method to fluorescent constructs of H-Ras and K-Ras revealed that only H-Ras in its guanosine 5 diphosphate (GDP)-bound form associates with cholesterol-dependent rafts [26]. 

D. Schleuder, F. Hillenkamp, and K. Strupat. IR-MALDI-Mass Analysis of Electroblotted Proteins Directly from the Membrane Comparison of Different Membranes, Application to On-membrane Digestion, and Protein Identification by Database Searching. Anal. Chem., 71(1999) 3238-3247. 

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