Separation methods Table membrane

The third main class of separation methods, the use of micro-porous and non-porous membranes as semi-permeable barriers (see Figure 2c) is rapidly gaining popularity in industrial separation processes for application to difficult and highly selective separations. Membranes are usually fabricated from natural fibres, synthetic polymers, ceramics or metals, but they may also consist of liquid films. Solid membranes are fabricated into flat sheets, tubes, hollow fibres or spiral-wound sheets. For the micro-porous membranes, separation is effected by differing rates of diffusion through the pores, while for non-porous membranes, separation occurs because of differences in both the solubility in the membrane and the rate of diffusion through the membrane. Table 2 is a compilation of the more common industrial separation operations based on the use of a barrier. A more comprehensive table is given by Seader and Henley.1... 

The classification of separation methods suitable for the four mentioned selectors is summarized in Table 3.10. Note that azeotropic distillation, membrane permeation and melt crystallization are the most expensive, but unavoidable in handling more complex mixtures. 

Liquid separation methods and corresponding characteristic physical properties are presented in Table 7.17. Note that besides distillation, stripping and extraction, other unit operations, as melt crystallisation, adsorption and membranes can be used. 

All the above mentioned high perm-selectivity of zeolite membranes can be attributed to the selective sorption into the membranes. Satisfactory performance can be obtained by defective zeolite membranes. Xylene isomers separation by zeolite membranes compared with polymeric membranes are summarized in Table 15.4. As shown, zeolite membranes showed much higher isomer separation performances than that of polymeric membranes. Specially, Lai et al. [41] prepared b-oriented silicalite-1 zeolite membrane by a secondary growth method with a b-oriented seed layer and use of trimer-TPA as a template in the secondary growth step. The membrane offers p-xylene permeance of 34.3 x 10 kg/m. h with p- to o-xylene separation factor of up to 500. Recently, Yuan et al. [42] prepared siUcalite-1 zeolite membrane by a template-free secondary growth method. The synthesized membrane showed excellent performance for pervaporation separation of xylene isomers at low temperature (50°C). 

Membrane Preparation Technology As is apparent from Table 5.3, the most important method in membrane preparation is phase separation. The phase separation method has been widely utilized due to the following advantages ... 

Most of the pollutants may be effectively removed by precipitation of metal hydroxides or carbonates using a reaction with lime, sodium hydroxide, or sodium carbonate. For some, improved removals are provided by the use of sodium sulfide or ferrous sulfide to precipitate the pollutants as sulfide compounds with very low solubilities. After soluble metals are precipitated as insoluble floes, one of the water-solid separators (such as dissolved air flotation, sedimentation, centrifugation, membrane filtration, and so on) can be used for floes removal.911 The effectiveness of pollutant removal by several different precipitation methods is summarized in Tables 5.15-5.17. 

As discussed by Pletcher 24, electrodialysis is an electrically driven membrane separation process. The main use of electrodialysis is in the production of drinking water by the desalination of sea-water or brackish water. Another large-scale application is in the production of sodium chloride for table salt, the principal method in Japan, with production exceeding 106 tonne per annum. 

Membranes with varying thickness (15-40 pm) were prepared from the copolymer by casting method. The permeation rate and separation factor as a function of membrane thickness was studied for 20 wt.% acetic acid solutions at 30 °C and the results were presented in Table 2. As reflected from the table as the membrane thickness increases permeation rate decreases whereas separation factor increases as expected from the Fick s first law [39]. 

A more promising approach for the synthesis of hydrophobic substances with ADHs is published by Kruse et al. [159, 238], They use a continuously operating reactor where the enzyme containing water phase is separated from the hydrophobic substrate-containing organic phase by a membrane. The hydrophobic product is extracted continuously via a hydrophobic membrane into an hexane phase, whereas the coenzyme is regenerated in a separate cycle, that consists of a hydrophilic buffer system. This method decouples advantageously the residence time of the cofactor from the residence time of the substrate. Several hydrophobic alcohols were prepared in this way with (S)-ADH from Rhodococcus erythropolis (Table 16). 

The preparation of some (S)-alcohols by ADH from Rhodococcus erythro-polis has been described quite recently. This was the first report of a continuous production process for hydrophobic compounds. An important prerequisite of this method is a membrane which is resistant to organic solvents. It separates the hydrophilic phase, which contains the enzyme and the coenzyme, from the hydrophobic phase with the substrate and the product. Several products were prepared with this enzyme at a multigram scale (Table 16). 

Equation (9.1) is the preferred method of describing membrane performance because it separates the two contributions to the membrane flux the membrane contribution, P /C and the driving force contribution, (pio — p,r). Normalizing membrane performance to a membrane permeability allows results obtained under different operating conditions to be compared with the effect of the operating condition removed. To calculate the membrane permeabilities using Equation (9.1), it is necessary to know the partial vapor pressure of the components on both sides of the membrane. The partial pressures on the permeate side of the membrane, p,e and pje, are easily obtained from the total permeate pressure and the permeate composition. However, the partial vapor pressures of components i and j in the feed liquid are less accessible. In the past, such data for common, simple mixtures would have to be found in published tables or calculated from an appropriate equation of state. Now, commercial computer process simulation programs calculate partial pressures automatically for even complex mixtures with reasonable reliability. This makes determination of the feed liquid partial pressures a trivial exercise. 

Table 3.4 presents more specific heuristics for gas separations. The condensation of subcritical components at suitable pressure by cooling with water is often practical. Before applying low-temperature separations or membranes the removal of water by glycol absorption or by adsorption is compulsory. In the case of impurities accumulating in recycles a powerful method is their chemical conversion by selective catalysis. Before treatment the impurities should be concentered by an enrichment operation. Catalytic conversion is also recommended for handling volatile organic components (VOC). 

There are other novel media with characteristics similar to functionalized membranes. Some of the commercially available media are listed in Table 2. These materials in many cases are at the cross-lines of definitions and are frequently compared in the MA literature. Organic separations in the reserve-phase (RP) and hydrophobic interaction chromatography (HIC) mode are not very common on filtration-based MA materials. However, the methacrylate copolymers can be used for this purpose. Also rodlike monolithic materials enable greater flexibility in these types of chemistry.13,14 The method of Tennikova and Svec15-17 has been used to commercialize a novel disk type separation media, called CIM (Convective interaction media, BIA, Ljubljana, Slovenia).18-21 Analytical-scale separations can be performed on... 

One of the current researches devoted to membrane treatment of radioactive waste is directed toward seeded ultrafiltration and all methods, which combined with ultrafiltration, give considerable enhancement of separation (Table 30.6). 

Despite of some technical and process limitations, membrane techniques are very useful methods for the treatment of different types of effluents. They can be applied in nuclear centers processing low- and intermediate-level liquid radioactive wastes or in fuel reprocessing plants. All the methods reported in the chapter have many advantages and can be easily adapted for actual, specific needs. Some of them are good pretreatment methods the other can be used separately as final cleaning steps, or can be integrated with other processes. Membrane methods can supplement or replace techniques of distillation, extraction, adsorption, ion exchange, etc. Evaluation of membrane processes employed for liquid radioactive waste treatment is presented in Table 30.17. 

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