Pervaporation separation factor

The PVA/PAAm IPN membranes were found to have pervaporation separation factors ranging from 45 to 4100 and permeation rates of about 0.06-0.1 kg m 2 h 1, for 95 % ethanol aqueous solution, at 75 °C [46], For a concentration of 10 wt% ethanol, the permeation rates were as large as 9 kg m 2 h 1 and the separation factors were about 20 [46],... 

Table 9.2 Typical silicone rubber membrane module pervaporation separation factors (VOC removal from water)...

Figure 9.14 Pervaporation separation factor, /9pervap> as a function of the VOC evaporation separation factor, /3evaP- Data obtained with laboratory-scale spiral-wound modules containing a composite silicone rubber membrane and in laboratory cells with thick membranes...

The pervaporation separation factor, f3pen,ap, simply equals the product of the evaporation (distillation)... 

Class Henry s Law coefficient (atm/mole frac.) Solubility in water (wt%) Pervaporation separation factor with silicone rubber membranes Ease of separation by pervaporation Examples... 

Recently, high-quality SOD membranes for water separation have been developed by Khajavi etal. [21, 52]. These zeolite membranes should allow an absolute separation of water from almost any mixture since only very small molecules such as water, hydrogen, helium, and ammonia can theoretically enter through the six-membered window apertures. Water/alcohol separation factors 10 000 have been reported with reasonable water fluxes up to 2.25 kg nr h at 473 K in pervaporation experiments. 

A very high separation factor has been obtained in phenol dehydration by using pervaporation process and PVA/PAA as membranes. The membrane composition and the process characteristics are presented in table 1. 

Hybrid membranes composed of poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) and tetraethylorthosilicate (TEOS), synthetised via hydrolysis and a co-condensation reaction for the pervaporation separation of water-isopropanol mixtures has also been reported [32], These hybrid membranes show a significant improvement in the membrane performance for water-isopropanol mixture separation. The separation factor increased drastically upon increasing the crosslinking (TEOS) density due to a reduction of free volume and increased chain stiffness. However, the separation factor decreased drastically when PVA was crosslinked with the highest amount of TEOS (mass ratio of TEOS to PVA is 2 1). The highest separation selectivity is found to be 900 for PVA TEOS (1.5 1 w/w) at 30°C. For all membranes, the selectivity decreased drastically up to 20 mass % of water in the feed and then remained almost constant beyond 20 mass %, signifying that the separation selectivity is much influenced at lower composition of water in the feed. 

B.-B. Li et al. [64] have studied the separation of EtOH-H20 solutions by pervaporation (PV) using chitosan (CS), poly (vinyl alcohol)-poly(acrylonitrile) (PVA-PAN) and chitosan-poly(vinyl alcohol)/poly(acrylonitrile) (CS-PVA/PAN) composite membranes. It was found that the separation factor of the CS-PVA/PAN composite membrane increased with an increase of PVA concentration in the CS-PVA polymer from 0 to 40 wt%. With an increase in the membrane thickness from 12 to 18 pm, the separation factor of the CS-PVA/PAN composite membrane increased and the permeation flux decreased. With an increase of ethanol-water solution temperature, the separation factor of the CS membrane decreased and the permeation flux of the CS membrane increased while the separation factor and the permeation flux of PVA/PAN and CS-PVA/PAN composite membranes increased. 

Another recent work presents the possibility to use a membrane made by PVA-g-acrylonitrile (AN) to separate acetic acid/water mixtures by pervaporation [70], The best separation factor (14.6) has been obtained by using PVA-g-AN (52 %) membrane, at 30°C, 90 % acetic acid in the feed. The permeation rate was 0.09 kg m"2h 1. 

To attain this goal, a pervaporation technique has been proposed, using a PVA composite membrane, made by casting of a mixture of PVA aqueous solution and a GA one on a polyethersulfone (PES) porous support, solvent evaporation and thermic curing [72], Excellent dehydration performance has been obtained (separation factor 320 and permeation flux 1.5 kg m 2 h 1, for 90 wt% TFEA in the feed and 80 °C). 

Evapomeation is a new membrane-separation technique for liquids mixtures, which eliminates some disadvantages of the pervaporation technique such as the decreasing of membrane permselectivity, due to its swelling by the direct contact with the feed solution. In evapomeation technique the membrane is not in direct contact with the feed solution, only with the solution s vapors. In this way the swelling of the membrane could be suppressed and consequently, the permeation rates in evapomeation are smaller than those in pervaporation, but the separation factor is greater [83],... 

The permeation and separation characteristics of PVA-g-AN membranes toward acetic acid-water mixtures were expressed as permeation rate (flux) (0, separation factor (a) and pervaporation separation index (PSI). 

Pervaporation separation index (PSI), which is a measure of the separation ability of a membrane was defined by Huang and Yeom [7] and expressed as the product of separation factor and permeation rate. 

Aptel et al. [40] observed a reduction of separation factor as a function of decreasing membrane thickness for grafted polytetrafluoroethylene films using a water/dioxane mixture. They have shown in a different study [41] that transport rate is inversely proportional to thicknes in the pervaporation separation of water through poly(tetra fluoroethylene)-poly(4-vinylpyridine) membranes. 

Aminabhavi and Naik [37] obtained similar results in the pervaporation of acetic acid-water mixtures by using PVA membranes. They reported that for 20 wt.% acetic acid solutions separation factor stayed constant at 35 and 45 °C although permeation rate increased with temperature. 

Additionally in pervaporation separation follows the solution-diffusion mechanism. Therefore the molecular size of the permeating molecules becomes very important to characterize the permeation behavior [43], It is known that acetic acid has larger molecular size (0.40 nm) than water molecules (0.28 nm). As the amount of acetic acid increases in the feed mixture it becomes difficult for acetic acid molecules to diffuse through the less swollen membrane, so separation factor increases at high acid concentrations. 

Having said this, the bulk of the pervaporation literature continues to report membrane performance in terms of the total flux through the membrane and a separation factor, /3pervap, defined for a two-component fluid as the ratio of the two components on the permeate side of the membrane divided by the ratio of the two components on the feed side of the membrane. The term /3pervap can be written in several ways. 

The separation factor, /3pervap, contains contributions from the intrinsic permeation properties of the membrane, the composition and temperature of the feed liquid, and the permeate pressure of the membrane. The contributions of these factors are best understood if the pervaporation process is divided into two steps, as shown in Figure 9.3 [18]. The first step is evaporation of the feed liquid to form a saturated vapor in contact with the membrane the second step is diffusion of this vapor through the membrane to the low-pressure permeate side. This two-step description is only a conceptual representation in pervaporation no vapor phase actually contacts the membrane surface. Nonetheless, the representation of the process shown in Figure 9.3 is thermodynamically completely equivalent to the actual pervaporation process shown in Figure 9.F... 

The relationship between the three separation factors, /3pe ap, /3evap and /3mem, is illustrated in Figure 9.4. This type of plot was introduced by Shelden and Thompson [20] to illustrate the effect of permeate pressure on pervaporation separation... 

Concentration polarization plays a dominant role in the selection of membrane materials, operating conditions, and system design in the pervaporation of VOCs from water. Selection of the appropriate membrane thickness and permeate pressure is discussed in detail elsewhere [50], In general, concentration polarization effects are not a major problem for VOCs with separation factors less than 100-200. With solutions containing such VOCs, very high feed velocities through... 

Figure 9.15 Once-through pervaporation system design. This design is most suitable for removal of VOCs with modest separation factors for which concentration polarization is not a problem...

For treating water containing VOCs with separation factors of more than 500, for which concentration polarization is a serious problem, feed-and-bleed systems similar to those described in the chapter on ultrafiltration can be used. For small feed volumes a batch process as illustrated in Figure 9.16 is more suitable. In a batch system, feed solution is accumulated in a surge tank. A portion of this solution is then transferred to the feed tank and circulated at high velocity through the pervaporation modules until the VOC concentration reaches the desired level. At this time, the treated water is removed from the feed tank, the tank is loaded with a new batch of untreated solution, and the cycle is repeated. 

L.M. Vane, F.R. Alvarez, A.P. Mairal and R.W. Baker, Separation of Vapor-phase Alcohol/Water Mixtures Via Fractional Condensation Using a Pilot-scale Dephlegma-tor Enhancement of the Pervaporation Process Separation Factor, Ind. Eng. Chem. Res. (in press). 

The mass flow is effected by keeping the downstream side of the membrane at reduced pressure. The performance of membranes for the pervaporation of ethanol-water mixtures is evaluated by the separation factor a H and the specific permeation rate R. is defined as follows ... 

Fig. 9. Separation factor (a o1) and specific permeation rate (R) of substituted polyacetylenes and other polymers in pervaporation (30 °C)...

Another application of substituted polyacetylenes is in the pervaporation of the ethanol-water mixture. Pervaporation is a method for separating liquid mixtures by evacuating the downstream side of the separation membrane (29). The performance of a membrane is evaluated by the separation factor (a) and the specific permeation rate (R). 

Separation of methanol and methyl tert-butyl ether (MTBE) is an important step in the production of MTBE which is a fast growing chemical. The separation by pervaporation using silica membranes has been modestly successful [van Gcmert and Cuperus, 1995J. A maximum separation factor of about 19 can be obtained. 

In another study by Nishiyama et al. [53], the Vapour-phase Transport method was applied on alumina supports. No permeation of 1,3,5-triisopropylbenzene (kinetic diameter 0.85 nm) could be observed through the 10 pm thick membrane. Mordenite has parallel channels with an elliptical pore dimension of 0.65 x 0.7 nm. Pervaporation of benzene-p-xylene (molar ratio 0.86) at 22°C resulted in a separation factor of 164 (total flux 1.19 10" mol.m s ). The theoretical value based on the gas-liquid equilibrium amounts to 11.3. Apparently, the mordenite-based membrane shows high selectivity for aromatic hydrocarbons. 

Generally, alcohols showed higher separation factors when present in model multicomponent solutions than in binary systems with water. On the other hand, aldehydes showed an opposite trend. The acmal tea aroma mixmre showed a rather different behavior from the model aroma mixmre, probably because of the presence of very large numbers of unknown compounds. Overall, the PDMS membrane with vinyl end groups used by Kanani et al. [20] showed higher separation factors and fluxes for most of the aroma compounds. Pervaporation was found to be an attractive technology. However, as mentioned above the varying selectivities for the different aroma compounds alter the sensory prohle and therefore application of PV for recovery of such mixmres needs careful consideration on a case-by-case basis. 

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