In-situ Ultrasonic Enhancement of Flux During Natural Rubber Skim Latex Recovery by Ultuafiltration

摘要

A study was conducted to investigate flux behavior during a cross-flow ultrafiltration(UF)process to concentrate natural rubber skim latex,with in-situ sonication.Tubular polyvinylidene fluoride(PVDF)membranes with 200kD molecular weight cut-off(MWCO)were selected for this study.Experiments were conducted to study the effect of skim latex preservation level with and without sonication at a transmembrane pressure(TMP)of 2 bar.Results showed the permeate flux remained constant with sonication,and a decline in flux was observed without sonication.This study was also able to determine the ideal preservation level where the in-situ sonication improved the permeate flux without affecting the stability of the feed.This ideal preservation becomes the optimum preservation level required for skim latex recovery by ultrafiltration with in-situ sonication.The study showed that the flux with an intermittent ultrasonic application with sonication ratio of 1 was comparable to that for continuous sonication.