Abstract
The waste-water of the chemical processes includes hundreds of hazardous pollutants with low concentration. Although the emission of trace amounts of these chemicals is allowed by the laws, they are quite harmful to the water ecosystem and the human health. These chemicals including the acetone, toluene, phenol, and esters are defined as volatile organic compounds (VOCs). Separation of the VOCs from the large volume of industrial waste-water is required practically complicated and advanced processes. In this approach, more economically and efficient separation methods can be more favorable such as pervaporation. Pervaporation (PV) is an attractive and promising method for separation the small amount of dissolved chemicals from the waste-water. Pervaporative separation does not need any toxic solvent or external heat energy during the separation process. Therefore, it is defined as a cost effective and environmentally friendly process. In this study, acetone was selected as a VOC component and it was selectively separated from the model mixture (acetone-water) by pervaporation where the poly(hedral oligomeric silsesquioxane)(POSS) loaded poly(dimethyl siloxane) hydrophobic membrane was used. The structure of the membrane was characterized by scanning electron and polarized microscopy methods. The surface structure of the membrane was also analyzed by contact angle measurements. Effects of feed temperature and acetone-water concentration on separation performance were evaluated in terms of the total flux and acetone separation factor. Compared to the pristine PDMS membrane, 212% improvement on separation factor was achieved by 10 wt.% POSS incorporated membrane. The highest acetone separation factor was obtained as 237 when the temperature was 30 ºC and the acetone concentration was 1%.
Highlights
Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are petrochemical based hazardous compounds that are present in almost all chemical waste or product stream at different range of their composition
The most common techniques used for VOCs removals are adsorption, air stripping, oxidation, distillation, and biological treatment methods are used to remove the VOCs from product or wastestream [4]
This can be attributed to the slow evaporation process of the membrane preparation procedure
Summary
Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are petrochemical based hazardous compounds that are present in almost all chemical waste or product stream at different range of their composition. Because of the low concentration of VOCs in water, advanced and costly methods are required to purify water [3]. The most common techniques used for VOCs removals are adsorption, air stripping, oxidation, distillation, and biological treatment methods are used to remove the VOCs from product or wastestream [4]. In the case of the adsorption method; zeolites, clays or different adsorbents are used to retain these impurities. Contrary to the air stripping, biological treatment is only effective if the concentration of VOC is low [5]. Membrane based separation process such as pervaporation (PV) is an alternative technique to purify the waste-water efficiently [6,7,8]
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