Abstract
In the current study, the treatment of pharmaceutical wastewater containing penicillin G treatment using a hollow fibre membrane contactor was investigated. A mathematical model based on the finite element method was developed. The extraction was performed using Shellsol TK as organic solvent containing 5% Aliquat 336. The effect of feed pH, flow rate and temperature were examined for the extraction of penicillin G from aqueous solution. The results showed that there is reasonable good agreement between experimental data and modelling values. It was found that increasing temperature from 10 °C to 30 °C increases the penicillin G extraction from 33% to 54%. Also, penicillin G extraction was decreased from 34.7% to 25.1% with increasing pH from 5.5 to 6.5 while it grew to 45.8% when the pH of feed solution was 7. Furthermore, the results showed the diffusive flux is favourable for the system and penicillin G extraction but the convective flux has negative impact on the system in terms of penicillin G extraction. It was concluded that a hollow fibre membrane contactor has the potential for use in wastewater treatment through it is important to improve diffusive flux in the system to enhance penicillin G extraction.
Highlights
The world is continuously being polluted with different chemical compounds of both natural and anthropogenic origin
The results showed the diffusive flux is favourable for the system and penicillin G extraction but the convective flux has negative impact on the system in terms of penicillin G extraction
It could be attributed to the assumption in the developed model that fresh organic solution enters into membrane contactor while in the experimental data the organic solution is circulated in the module
Summary
The world is continuously being polluted with different chemical compounds of both natural and anthropogenic origin. With respect to traditional techniques, hollow fibre membrane contactor (HFMC) demonstrates great potential because of its high surface area per volume ratio and independence from aqueous and organic solutions flow rates, and has been recognised as an alternative method for wastewater treatment. Using HFMC has several benefits including prevention of foaming, channelling, entrainment and corrosion problems in the system, easy scale up, up to 500 mÀ1 surface area per unit of module volume (Pabby and Sastre, 2013) Given these advantages, it will be interesting to investigate pharmaceutical wastewater treatment using HFMCs in more detail. Non-dispersive solvent extraction of penicillin G from pharmaceutical wastewater with an organic phase of Aliquat 336 in Shellsol TK was investigated. The effect of operational parameters and membrane characteristics on the removal of penicillin G was evaluated
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