Room temperature ionic liquids show potential as an alternative toconventional organic membrane solvents mainly due to their properties of lowvapor pressure, low volatility and they are often stable. In the present work,the technical feasibilities of room temperature ionic liquids as bulk liquidmembranes for phenol removal were investigated experimentally. Three ionicliquids with high hydrophobicity were used and their phenol removal efficiency,membrane stability and membrane loss were studied. Besides that, the effects ofseveral parameters, namely feed phase pH, feed concentration, NaOHconcentration and stirring speeds on the performance of best ionic liquidmembrane were also evaluated. Lastly, an optimization study on bulk ionicliquid membrane was conducted and the maximum phenol removal efficiency wascompared with the organic liquid membranes. The preliminary study shows thathigh phenol extraction and stripping efficiencies of 96.21% and 98.10%,respectively can be achieved by ionic liquid membrane with a low membrane losswhich offers a better choice to organic membrane solvents.
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