Membrane processes flat membranes

Spiral-wound modules consist of several flat membranes separated by turbulence-promoting mesh separators and formed into a Swiss roll (Figure 16.18). The edges of the membranes are sealed to each other and to a central perforated tube. This produces a cylindrical module which can be installed within a pressure tube. The process feed enters at one end of the pressure tube and encounters a number of narrow, parallel feed channels formed between adjacent sheets of membrane. Permeate spirals roward the perforated central tube for collection. A standard size spiral-wound module has a diameter of about 0.1m, a length of about 0.9 m and contains about 5 m2 of membrane area. Up to six such modules may be installed in series in a single pressure tube. These modules make better use of space than tubular or flat sheet types, but they are rather prone to fouling and difficult to clean. 

Whereas the liquid-solid filtration processes described so far can separate particles down to a size of around 10 xm, for smaller particles that need to be separated, a porous polymer membrane can be used. This process, known as microfiltration, retains particles down to a size of around 0.05. im. A pressure difference across the membrane of 0.5 to 4 bar is used. The two most common practical arrangements are spiral wound and hollow fiber. In the spiral wound arrangement, flat membrane sheets separated by spacers for the flow of feed and filtrate are wound into a spiral and inserted in a pressure vessel. Hollow... 

In the supported liquid membrane process, the liquid membrane phase impregnates a microporous solid support placed between the two bulk phases (Figure 15.1c). The liquid membrane is stabilized by capillary forces making unnecessary the addition of stabilizers to the membrane phase. Two types of support configurations are used hollow fiber or flat sheet membrane modules. These two types of liquid membrane configuration will be discussed in the following sections. 

Membrane separation processes are discussed in Chapter 8. Liquid-phase mass transfer rates at the surface of membranes - either flat or tubular - can be predicted by the correlations given in this chapter. 

Flat-membrane contactors have been specifically designed and commercialized by GVS SpA (Italy) for air dehumidification processes [23]. 

Interestingly, an innovative design has been described recently by the Fraunhofer IGB, Germany [27], allowing the production of flat membrane modules with an effective filtration area of 1 m (Figure 6.17a). This concept is based on novel flat ceramic supports specially processed to produce corrugated channels and able to receive micro- and ultrafiltration membranes (Figure 6.17b). 

Today the majority of polymeric porous flat membranes used in microfiltration, ultrafiltration, and dialysis are prepared from a homogenous polymer solution by the wet-phase inversion method [59-66]. This method involves casting of a polymer solution onto an inert support followed by immersion of the support with the cast film into a bath filled with a non-solvent for the polymer. The contact between the solvent and the non-solvent causes the solution to be phase separated. This process involves the use of organic solvents that must be expensively removed from the membrane with posttreatments, since residual solvents can cause potential problems for use in biomedical apphcations (i.e., dialysis). Moreover, long formation times and a limited versatihty (reduced possibUity to modulate cell size and membrane stmcture) characterize this process. 

One-dimensional diffusion through a flat membrane will be treated in the following discussion. The effects of membrane asymmetry will be neglected since the process of permselection occurs in the thin dense layer of effective thickness, Z, at the membrane surface. In such a case, the expression for the local flux of a penetrant at any point in the dense layer can be written as shown in Equation 1 C14) ... 

The developed DEM simulation program has been used to study the mechanics for the pore-gradient formation via centrifugal casting under different colloidal and process conditions. The necessary process parameters were designed and optimized by this DEM simulation tool. Hereby the fabrication of. AI2O3 flat membranes was considered as a case study and will be shown in this paper. 

Compared to batch processes, continuous processes often show a higher space-time yield. Reaction conditions may be kept within certain limits more easily. For easier scale-up of some enzyme-catalyzed reactions, the Enzyme Membrane Reactor (EMR) has been developed. The principle is shown in Fig. 7-26 A. The difference in size between a biocatalyst and the reactants enables continuous homogeneous catalysis to be achieved while retaining the catalyst in the vessel. For this purpose, commercially available ultrafiltration membranes are used. When continuously operated, the EMR behaves as a continuous stirred tank reactor (CSTR) with complete backmixing. For large-scale membrane reactors, hollow-fiber membranes or stacked flat membranes are used 129. To prevent concentration polarization on the membrane, the reaction mixture is circulated along the membrane surface by a low-shear recirculation pump (Fig. 7-26 B). 

Pervaporation membrane reactors are not a recent discovery. The use of a PVMR was proposed in a U.S. patent dating back to 1960 [3.6]. Though the technical details on membrane preparation and experimental apparatus were rather sketchy, the basic idea was described there, namely, the use of a water permeable polymeric membrane to drive an esterification reaction to completion. A more detailed description of a PVMR can be found in a later European patent [3.7], which described the use of a flat membrane (commercial PVA or Nafion ) placed in the middle of a reactor consisting of two half-cells. The reaction studied was the acetic acid esterification reaction with ethanol. For an ethanol to acetic acid ratio of 2, liquid hourly space velocities (LHSV) in the range of 2-5, and a temperature of 90 °C complete conversion of the acetic acid was reported. The use of PVMR for this reaction shows promise for process simplification, as indicated schematically in Figure 3.2, which shows a side-by-side comparison of a conventional and a proposed PVMR plant for ethyl acetate production. 

An industrial application of dialysis is the recovery of caustic from hemi-cellulose solutions produced in making rayon by the viscose process. Flat-sheet membranes are placed parallel to each other in a filter-press arrangement (see Chap. 30, p. 1004) and water is passed countercurrent to the feed solution to produce a dialyzate with up to 6 percent NaOH. Recovery of salts or sugars from other natural products or other colloidal solutions could be achieved by dialysis, but ultrafiltration is more likely to be used because of the higher permeation rates that can be obtained. 

Different filtration probes can be used. In Figure 22-5, a filtration probe for sampling in a fermenter bypass is shown [28, 34]. Since flat membranes are used in this probe, many types of micro- and ultrafiltration membranes can be used. On the other hand, the increased risk of infection can make bypass sampling problematic. The membranes used should be selected for cut-off size and material (eg, adsorption characteristics) as required by the process conditions. They should provide a sample stream that has the same analyte concentrations as the liquid in the fermenter. An in situ probe employing tubular membranes is shown in Figure 22-6. Thbular membranes are not available in the same variety as flat membranes, but this probe offers the advantages of a very small dead volume and simple connection to a fermenter via an ordinary sensor port. 

In general, in the process of preparing flat membranes or microcapsules by phase inversion, the first step is to prepare a polymeric solution. The polymeric solution is prepared by dissolving the polymer in a suitable solvent. The polymer concentration usually ranges between 10 and 30 wt.%. 

Disadvantages of the known porous polymeric membrane preparation processes are that they involve additional process steps after the formation of the fiber to come to a final product. It is therefore desirable to have a more efficient preparation process. A new method to prepare structures of any geometry (Figure 6.13c through f) and large variety of functionality was recently proposed [61]. The authors proposed to incorporate the functionality by dispersion of particles in a polymeric porous structure formed by phase inversion. A slurry of dissolved polymer and particulate material can be cast as a flat film or spun into a fiber and then solidified by a phase inversion process. This concept is nowadays commercialized by Mosaic Systems. The adsorber membranes prepared via this route contain particles tightly held together within a polymeric matrix of different shapes, which can be operated either in stack of microporous flat membranes or as a bundle of solid or hollow-fiber membranes. 

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