Journal
CHEMICAL ENGINEERING SCIENCE
Volume 64, Issue 23, Pages 4908-4918Publisher
PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD
DOI: 10.1016/j.ces.2009.07.028
Keywords
Pervaporation; Natural rubber; Poly(vinyl alcohol); Zeolite 4A; Mixed matrix membrane
Categories
Funding
- Office of the Higher Education Commission
- Ministry of Education, Thailand
- Thailand Research Fund (TRF) [MRG5180289, RDG4950118]
- Integrated Nanotechnology Research Center (NaNoKKU) at Khon Kaen University
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The pervaporation dehydration of water-ethanol mixtures was investigated using the mixed matrix (MM) membranes prepared from natural rubber (NR) and crosslinked poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) semi-IPN embedded with the zeolite 4A. With the presence of NR as well as zeolite, the swelling of MM membranes in water was effectively suppressed. Examined by DSC, the non-freezing bound water in the MM membranes was found decreasing with more zeolite loading because the water-polymer interaction is diminishing. The sorption study of MM membranes revealed a preferential sorption to water with improved water sorption selectivity as increasing the zeolite loading. For pervaporation at 5 vol% water in feed, the reversed trade-off with respect to the zeolite loading was encountered such that the total permeation flux increased along with an enhancement of the water separation factor. For higher feed water concentration, despite the greater total permeation flux, the separation factor was reduced owing to the extensive swelling of the polymer matrix. The temperature dependency of the partial water and ethanol fluxes followed the Arrhenius relationship and the estimated activation energies for water flux were lower than those of the ethanol flux, suggesting that the developed MM membranes are highly water selective. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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