Separating a water-propanol mixture using PDMS pervaporation membranes

Abstract

Recovering and purifying organic solvents during chemical and pharmaceutical synthesis has great economic and environmental importance. Water-alcohol mixture pervaporation was investigated using a pervaporation cell and hy-drophobic membranes. This work studied polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) membrane performance and hydrophobic membranes for removing propanol from aqueous mixtures. PDMS is recognised as being alcohol permselective du-ring pervaporation. It was also observed that water was transferred through a hydrophobic membrane as water's molecular size is smaller than that of propanol. A laboratory-scale pervaporation unit was used for studying this membrane's separation characteristics in terms of pervaporation flux and selectivity for feeds containing up to water mass and 30°C-50°C. Total propanol/water flux was observed to vary as operating temperature increased. Although PDMS membranes presented good characteristics for separating water/propanol mixtures, the separation factor and pervaporation flow decreased as water content in the feed increased. The tested membrane was found to be very e-fficient for water concentrations of less than 0.3, corresponding to total flux transfer maximum.