Mass transfer in single oil-impregnated microporous hollow fiber contactors

Abstract

Studies were made of mass transfer in a single hydrophobic microporous hollow fiber (HF) contactor in two operating modes : bound membrane and supported liquid membrane. Two aqueous film mass-transfer coefficients, k s and k t , on the shell and lumen sides were obtained with an extraction system of water/iodine/n-heptane. The values of k t were in reasonable agreement with previous correlations, whereas the k s values were given by two empirical correlations for laminar and turbulent flows. These transfer coefficients for the oil-containing hydrophobic HFs were smaller than the literature values for solid tube flows by a factor of 10-15%. The membrane-transfer coefficient had a tendency to decrease with an increase in the inner-to-outer diameter ratio of the HF