Extraction of Organic Volatile Pollutants in Over-Saturated Water by Pervaporation Technique Using a Poly (Dimethylsiloxane)-Based Sealer as a Membrane

Wafa Nazzal Alharbi,Waseem Sharaf Saeed,Taieb Aouak,Ahmed Yacine Badjah-Hadj-Ahmed,Abdulrahman A Alwarthan

doi:10.3390/w13081049

Abstract

SILICONE1200 is an inexpensive domestic poly (dimethylsiloxane)-based sealer that was used in this study to remove volatile organic compounds from over-saturated water using the pervaporation technique. A series of volatile organic liquid compounds representing an important part of polluting organic products released every day in water were chosen for this study. These products were alkyl halides (chloroform), aromatics (toluene), aliphatic hydrocarbons (heptanes), ketones and aldehydes (butanone), and organosulfides (thiophene). The mass transfer of these compounds and their mixtures through the SILICONE1200 membrane was assessed to predict the results of the separation process. The results indicate that the mechanism of diffusion obeyed a Fickian model. Different parameters affecting the pervaporation results, such as the membrane thickness, stirring rate, and temperature, were examined to determine the optimal conditions in terms of the total flux and selectivity. The optimized parameters were then applied to the separation of an organic mixture from polluted water using the dynamic pervaporation process with promising results.

Highlights

The world is experiencing unprecedented industrial development, since the development of the petroleum industries in 1901
The decontamination of water from organic effluent has attracted considerable attention using various methods [2,3,4], such as the traditional treatment of water polluted with volatile organic compounds (VOCs), including air stripping, carbon adsorption, biological treatment [5], and membrane separation techniques
Butanone and thiophene were the least absorbed among the organic mixture components with similar levels of 90% and 100% by weight of the membrane, respectively

Summary

Introduction

The world is experiencing unprecedented industrial development, since the development of the petroleum industries in 1901. Pervaporation has numerous advantages over other conventional techniques: high separation efficiency, efficiency in breaking azeotropes [13] and microemulsions [14,15,16]; being non-polluting, energy saving, easy to incorporate in production lines, used in industrial refining processes; and environment protection (water treatment). This process is mainly used for dehydrating organic and hydro-organic compounds [16,17,18], removing organic matter at low concentrations from aqueous solutions [19,20,21], and separating organic–organic compounds [22,23,24]

Methods

Results

Conclusion