Effect of competing amines on the removal of tetramethylammonium hydroxide from solution using ion exchange

Tetramethylammonium hydroxide (TMAH, TMA(+)) has been widely used as the photoresist developer in semiconductor and thin film transistor liquid crystal display manufacturing. In this study, TMAH-containing wastewater was treated by ion exchange method. Strong acid cation exchange resin was used. A kinetics study revealed that the ion exchange reaction reached equilibrium within 20 min and it could be described by a pseudo-second-order model. To assess the effects of competing ions, wastewater was spiked with three different amines, namely ethylamine (EA(+)), diethylamine (DEA(+)), and triethylamine (TEA(+)). TMAH uptake decreased when in the presence of amines, and it decreased in the order EA(+) < DEA(+)< TEA(+). It could be attributed to different proton affinity (PA) and the strength of affinity between amine molecules and resin matrix, as found from the ab initio calculation values and Langmuir isotherm parameters. However, the interaction energy between sulphonic acid groups and interfering amines in solution using density functional theory (DFT) calculation resulted in a different trend compared with that of PA. The difference might be caused by stabilization of amines by resin matrix and different molecular structures.