Removal of Volatile Organic Component (VOC) from Aqueous Waste Using Pervaporation Membranes

摘要

In recent years extensive research work is going on pervaporation (PV) for separation of traces of organic waste or volatile organic components (VOC). PV is also very effective for separation of these organic pollutants present in low concentration in water which are difficult to separate by conventional means of separation. In the present work pervaporation membranes have been made from some homopolymers like unplasticized polyvinyl chloride (UPVC), polystyrene(PS) and blends of UPVC and PS in different compositions. Pervaporation of tetrahydrofuran (THF) with different concentrations(0.44 to 11.3 wt%) in water have been studied under various conditions like feed concentration, temperature etc. Activation energy of permeation have also been studied as a function of feed concentration..Pure UPVC membrane has been found to give highest selectivity (170.28 at 0.44 wt% water in feed) but with lowest THF flux(0.005 kg/ m~2hr) while blend-10 containing 10 wt% PS gave higher THF flux(0.009 kg/m~2hr) with little reduction in selectivity(～128) for the same feed concentration. The flux or selectivity of pure PS was not encouraging.