Abstract
The present study investigates the performance of indigenous hydrophobic polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) based porous membranes for separation of valuable organics such as acetamide catalyst and tartaric acid from aqueous media. Dehydration of acetamide was carried using ultraporous hydrophobic PVDF membrane by vacuum membrane distillation (VMD) technique. Effect of feed concentration on membrane performance was studied. Membrane exhibited a high total flux of 0.32 kg/m2h with <1.2% acetamide losses in permeate during concentration of acetamide catalyst from 30% to 70% (w/v). The separation of tartaric acid from synthetic mixture was carried out using indigenous ultraporous PVDF/Polyurethane (PU) blend membrane by liquid-liquid membrane contactor (LLMC) system. Influence of various additives such as LiCl2, ZnCl2, glycerol and polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) on membrane performance was studied. PVDF/PU/glycerol membrane exhibited extraction efficiency of nearly 12% for initial acid and extractant concentration of 100 mol/m3 and 30%, respectively, within a processing time of 2 h. All the indigenously synthesized membranes were characterized using analytical tools to study the physico-chemical properties of polymer films. A mathematical model for VMD system has also been developed to validate the experimental results. The study inferred that the processes employed could be considered as alternative techniques over conventional methods for recovery of both solid catalyst and organic acids which are widely used in industry.
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