Treatment of gaseous effluents by membrane processes

摘要

The use of membranes in gas and vapor separation from air has known an important development in the last ten years. One of the recently exploited applications is the recovery of volatile organic compounds (VOC) (e.g. solvents, light hydrocarbons), for this operation is economically more feasible than disposing or flaring effluents containing traces of them. This work describes the vapor permeation of ethanol in air and toluene in air as well as mixtures of ethanol/toluene through ceramic supported membranes. According to what is been reported, PDMS membranes among others are tested. The operating conditions were: feed pressure, 2-4 bar; permeate pressure, 1 mbar; temperature, 25oC; feed flow, 2.33 x 10 -6 –2.66 x 10 -6 m 3 s -1 ; ethanol in air concentration, 3.9% vol. The feed flows, retentates and permeates are analyzed by GC-FID. The objective of the study is to find out if the ceramic support affects the permeability behavior through the tested polymers and to determine the separation degree of the ethanol/toluene mixture.