Pervaporation separation of real industrial aromatic/alicyclic/aliphatic/ alcoholic multicomponent mixtures using MSE polymeric membranes

The pervaporation separation of aromatics from real industrial multicomponent mixtures containing 12 aromatic/alicyclic/aliphatic/alcoholic compounds was investigated using MSE polymer membranes. The effects of operating parameters including temperature, flow rate, permeate pressure, total aromatic content, and methanol contamination on PV performance were investigated. The behavior of the membrane in terms of swelling, plasticization and coupling effect in contact with real industrial multicomponent feed was evaluated and the work was completed by finding how the operating parameters influence the mass transfer mechanisms, component activity, dominant and limiting transfer phenomena, and coupling effect. The results showed that methanol contamination weakened the positive influences of increasing temperature and reducing permeate pressure. The coupling effects between benzene/toluene as fast-permeating components on n-hexane/cyclo-hexane as slow-permeating components in the presence of methanol were investigated. The results revealed that benzene has a stronger kinetic coupling effect on n-hexane and cyclohexane than toluene has. Furthermore, the coupling effect is more effective on n-hexane than cyclohexane. The results also showed that the presence of a second fast-permeating component (methanol) typically enhances the permeation of slow-permeating species. In general, the coupling effect had a negative effect on the PV performance in this work which favors the aromatic recovery.