• Membrane Journal
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.57-62
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• 1994

This study uses pervaporation process to separate small amount of organic trichloroethylene, chloroform and perchloroethylene from contaminated water, since chlorinated hydrocarbones are known to be cancer suspecting compounds. For the separation of small amount of halogenated organic compound dissolved in wastewater, pervaporation membranes should be polymers that possess affinity with orgnic compounds and hydrophobicity. We used polyisobutylene, polyetheramide and polydimethylsiloxane membranes. The degree of affinity between organics and polymers were measured by contact angle method. We had good separation results that separation factor ranged from 34 to 19100 and permeate flux was$19.7~140g/m^2hr$.

• Clean Technology
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.156-165
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• 2011

The process for bioethanol production from lignocellulosic biomass was studied through process simulation using PRO/II. Process integration was conducted with concentrated acid pretreatment, hydrolysis process, SMB (simulated moving bed chromatography) process and pervaporation process. Energy consumption could be minimized by the heat recovery process. In addition, material and energy balance were calculated based on the results from the simulation and literature data. A net production yield of 4.07 kg-biomass and energy consumption value of 3,572 kcal per 1 kg ethanol were calculated, which is indicating that 26% yield increase and 30% energy saving compared to the bioethanol production process with dilute-acid hydrolysis (SRI report). In order to make it possible, sugar conversion yield of cellulose and hemi-cellulose is to be reached up to 90% and fermentation of xylose needs to be developed. In order to reduce the energy consumption up to 30%, the concentration of acid solution after being separated by 5MB should exceed 20%. If acid/sugar separation by SMB process is to be practical, the bioethanol process designed in this study can be commercially feasible.

• Membrane Journal
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.1-20
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• 1992

Classical membrane processes like microfiltration (MF), ultrafiltration (UF) and reverse osmosis (RO) are being applied in the last years more frequently in environmental and effluent process problems. Newer technologies and developments like pervaporation (PV) and gas sepaxation (GS) recently found commercial applications in the treatment of waste waters and gas streams. The incentive here is either the clean-up from organic components to comply with federal emission regulations or the recovery of the organics for economical reasons. Processes still in their development stage are combinations of chemical reactions with membrane processes to separate and treat $SO_x$ and $NO_x$ laden waste gas streams in the clean-up of stack-gases. In this paper we will first give a short overview of the more recent developments in MF, UF and RO. This is followed by a closer look on newer technologies applied in environmental problems. The applications looked at are the recovery of organic components from solvent laden gas streams and the separation of organic volatiles from aqueous waste waters via pervaporation. Technical solutions, the advantages and disadvantages of the processes and. where possible, cost estimations will be presented.

• Proceedings of the Membrane Society of Korea Conference
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• 1996.06a
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• pp.33-89
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• 1996

History of Membrane Process Development 1920 : microfiltration : Zsigmondy 1930 : ultrafiltration 1950 : hemodialysis : Kolff 1955 : electrodialysis 1960 : reverse osmosis : Loeb, sourirajan 1960 : ultrafiltration 1979 : gas separation : Henis, Tripodi 1982 : pervaporation : Tusel

• Membrane and Water Treatment
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• v.8 no.5
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• pp.437-448
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• 2017

A high quality Na-X zeolite membrane was synthesized on a seeded ${\alpha}-alumina$ disc by the secondary growth method. Structural characterization was done by X-ray spectroscopy, FT-IR spectroscopy, SEM and AFM imaging. The performance evaluation of the membrane was firstly tested in separation of glucose/water solutions by pervaporation process. There was obtained a separation factor $182.7{\pm}8.8$, while the flux through the membrane was $3.6{\pm}0.3kg\;m^{-2}\;h^{-1}$. The zeolite membrane was then used for desalination of aqueous solutions consisting of $Na^+$, $Ca^{2+}$, $Cs^+$ and $Sr^{2+}$ because of the importance of these ions in water and wastewater treatments. The effects of some parameters such as temperature and solution concentration on the desalination process were studied for investigating of diffusion/adsorption mechanism in membrane separation. Finally, high water fluxes ranged from 2 up to $9kg\;m^{-2}\;h^{-1}$ were obtained and the rejection factors were resulted more than 95% for $Na^+$ and $Ca^{2+}$ and near to 99% for $Cs^+$ and $Sr^{2+}$. Based on the results, fluxes were significantly improved due to convenient passage of water molecules from large pores of NaX, while the fouling was declining dramatically. Based on the results, NaX zeolite can efficiently use for the removal of different cations from wastewaters.

• Membrane Journal
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.107-113
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• 1999

Alcohol concentration via pervaporation process was performed by using commercial PDMS(polydimethylsiloxane) composite membrane and plasma treated PP(polypropylene) membranes. Effects of operating parameters of pcrvaporation process were examined. With the increase of butanol concentration in the feed, flux and selectivity increased due to the greater affinity of butanol with PDMS than that of water. As the operating temperature increased, free volume as well as the solubilities and diffusivities of alcohol and water increased to result in the greater flux and less selectivity of the membrane. As solubility parameter difference between alcohol and PDMS membrane decreased, high flux and good selectivity were obtained. When PP membrane was plasma treated with methanol, it has 6 times greater flux than PDMS membrane with equivalent separation factor. With the increase of plasma treatment time, flux and selectivity were enhanced. However, excess treatment time caused pore blocking to result in the flux decrease.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.49 no.6
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• pp.816-822
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• 2011

Pervaporation is known to be a low energy consumption process since it needs only an electric power to maintain the permeate side in vacuum. Also, the pervaporation is an environmentally clean technology because it does not use the third material such as an entrainer for either an azeotropic distillation or an extractive distillation. In this study, Silicalite-1 particles are hydrothermally synthesized and polydimethylsiloxane(PDMS)-zeolite composite membranes are prepared with a mixture of synthesized Silicalite-1 particles and PDMS-polymer. They are used to separate n-butanol from its aqueous solution. Pervaporation characteristics such as a permeation flux and a separation factor are investigated as a function of the feed concentration and the weight % of Silicalite-1 particles in the membrane. A 1,000 $cm^3$ aqueous solution containing butanol of low mole fraction such as order of 0.001 was used as a feed to the membrane cell while the pressure of the permeation side was kept about 0.2~0.3 torr. When the butanol concentration in the feed solution was 0.015 mole fraction, the flux of n-butanol significantly increased from 14.5 g/ $m^2$/hr to 186.3 g/$m^2$/hr as the Silicalite-1 content increased from 0 wt% to 10 wt%, indicating that the Silicalite-1 molecular sieve improved the membrane permselectivity from 4.8 to 11.8 due to its unique crystalline microporous structure and its strong hydrophobicity. Consequently, the concentration of n-butanol in the permeate substantially increased from 0.07 to 0.15 mole fraction. This composite membrane could be potentially appliable for separation of n-butanol from insitu fermentation broth where n-butanol is produced at a fairly low concentration of 0.015 mole fraction.

• Membrane Journal
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• v.27 no.6
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• pp.487-498
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• 2017

In this study, pervaporation performances of water/methanol and water/butanol mixture were evaluated using zeolite 4A membranes manufacutred by FINETECH by experimental works and numerical modeling. Permeation and separation characteristics, such as flux and separation factor, were analyzed by gas chromatography (TCD) and liquid nitrogen traps. Experiments have shown that water is selectively separated from a mixture of water and methanol (separation factor up to approximately 250) and water and butanol (separation factor up to approximately 1,500). Generalized Maxwell Stefan (GMS) theory was implemented to predict pervaporation behaviors of water/alcohol mixtures and diffusional coefficients of zeolite layer were obtained through parameter estimation using $MATLAB^{(R)}$ optimization toolbox. Since the pore size of zeolite 4A are much larger than kinetic diameter of water molecules and smaller than those of methanol and butanol, zeolite 4A membranes can be applied to in situ water removal process such as membrane reactors or hybrid reaction-dehydration process.

• Membrane Journal
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.54-62
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• 2009

Pervaporation membrane for butanol separation was prepared by hybrid process. Plasma treatment of commercial poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS) membrane was attempted and combination of plasma treatment and PDMS solution coating on polysulfone, poly(ether imide) supports were also performed. Plasma treatment of PDMS membrane with hexane and silane group compounds was performed to increase the hydrophobicity of the surface, which enhanced the separation factor upto 12.5 at the expense of flux decrease down to $1.15kg/m^2{\cdot}hr$. Contact angle and relative sorption ratio were also related with hydrophobicity of the memrbane. Increase of PDMS prepolymer composition resulted in dense structure of coating layer with better separation factor. Effects of sequence of PDMS coating vs. plasma treatment were examined. It was found that plasma treatment with butanol and n-hexane plasma followed by PDMS coating showed better performance and vice versa for plasma treatment with hexamethyldisilane and hexamethyldisilazane.

• Membrane Journal
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.268-282
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• 2003

Pervaporation-facilitated esterification with slow reaction regime was characterized by using a practical model based on non-perfect separation through membrane. A non-perfect separation in which the membrane is not perfectly permselective to water was applied to the model. Thus, membrane selectivity and membrane capability to remove water were included in the simulation model to explain how they influence the membrane-facilitated reaction process and improve the reactor performance. It was shown by simulation that in the reaction systems with non-perfect separation, reaction completion can hardly be achievable when any reactant at initial molar ratio=1 or the less abundant reactant at initial molar ratio>1 permeates through membrane, and the permeation of ester accelerates the forward reaction md increase reaction conversion at any instant through removal of product species like water. The volume change causes concentrating both reactants and products that affect the reaction with time in opposite ways; reactant-concentrating effect is dominant during the initial stage of reaction, increasing the reaction rate, and then concentrating product influences more reaction by decreasing the reaction rate.