Pervaporation of High Boiling Point Organic Compounds with Composite PDMS Membrane

High Boiling Point Organic Compounds (HBOCs) are defined as those organic compounds with boiling point over water (100 degrees C). It is a challenging problem to separate HBOCs from their mixtures with water. Three HBOCs, propargyl alcohol, butanol, and pyridine, were selected as the experimental samples for observing their separation behaviors from water mixtures by PDMS membrane pervaporation. These HBOCs could preferentially permeate the PDMS membrane and were selectively extracted from the mixtures through the membrane. The experimental tests showed that the permeation flux of propargyl alcohol, butanol, and pyridine was 243.24, 976.5, and 904.70gm(2)h(1), with the corresponding selectivity of 3.78, 29.65, and 26.09, respectively. The effects of the feed flow rate, feed concentration, and temperature on the separation behaviors were examined. By comparison with distillation that separates different components in a mixture on the basis of boiling point, the membrane pervaporation seems to behave a reverse direction selective separation for the HBOCs. For those aqueous mixtures with tiny content of HBOCs, the reverse selective separation by membrane pervaporation should be considered as a promising and effective technology.