Extraction of reactive dye using new supported liquid membrane

Abstract

Currently, it is estimated that around 10,000 tons of dyes have been discharged around the world and causing some environmental problems. Since conventional treatments are not effective to degrade discharged dyes, efficient method should be applied to treat these pollutants. Supported liquid membrane (SLM) is an effective treatment for the removal of reactive dyes from wastewater because it provides maximum driving force for the separation of targeted solute and simultaneous extraction and stripping process, which lead to excellent separation. In this research, kerosene-salicyclic acid-tridodecylamine liquid membranes were used. Several factors that influence the stability of the SLM process, such as characteristics of the polymeric support and operating parameters were identified. The fabricated support was produced using thermally induced phase separation (TIPS). During fabrication process, different concentration of polymers at 10 wt%, 15 wt% and 20 wt% were tested. Several operating parameters for separation of Red 3BS reactive dye such as flow rate and pH of feed phase, concentration of stripping agent and concentration of feed phase were investigated using commercial support in order to find favourable process conditions. Results showed that the fabricated support with 15% of polymer concentration performed well as a membrane support with 100% of extraction and 58% of recovery of Red 3BS dye at favorable condition of 0.1 M sodium hydroxide as stripping agent, 100 ml/min of feed flow rate, 50 ppm Red 3BS and pH 3 of feed phase. The stability test also proved that the fabricated membrane remained stable up to 25 hours without suffering any breakage on its structure. As a conclusion, the fabricated support was proven to have high potential as a membrane support due to its high stability and excellent performance in separation process.