Modeling of Heavy Metal Recovery with Carrier Mediated Dispersed Liguid Membranes

Abstract

The field of liquid membrane technology is currently undergoing a rapid expansion in both research and industrial applications as a novel separation process. A dispersed liquid membrane system (water/oil/water) is formed by rapid mixing of two immiscible phases of oil and aqueous solution and then add the emulsion phase to a slow agitated external source aqueous solution where heavy metals to be removed. High molecular weight organics are Added to the membrane phase to facilitate the removal of heavy metals from the external source phase to the internal receiving phase. The final internal phase metal concentration could be one thousand times of the metal concentration of the external source phase. The concentrated solution can then be separated for further processing. In this study, a carrier mediated mass transfer mechanism is proposed and mathematical models are developed to predict the extraction rate of metals from a dilute solution with dispersed liquid membranes in a well mixed tank. No parameter has to be determined from experimental data. Laboratory data are used to test the models. The agreement of the models with experimental data are excellent.