Opportunities and challenges in supported liquid membrane technology for heavy metal extraction and recovery: a review

摘要

The present paper is an extended review on supported liquid membrane (SLM) for extraction and recovery of heavy metals, followed by the problems encountered during implementations and its potential outlooks for future applications. SLM technology integrates the processes of extraction, transport and re-extraction of heavy metals in a single continual system and has been proven with promising potential over other methods. Extraction and recovery of various heavy metal ions with several SLM configurations have been summarised. This review highlights the recent developments of SLM technology and the key issues related to their implementations with the performance efficiency and their apparent limitations. Substantial progress and breakthroughs to promote improvement of SLM are discussed. Future outlooks are also discussed to integrate this technology for better heavy metal extraction and recovery processes and to further broaden the research and development related to SLM.