A ceramic microfiltration tube membrane dispersion extractor

Although the phase-free membrane extraction process has shown many advantages over the traditional extraction, the process is still at the experimental stage. On the other hand, in a new extractor a microfiltration membrane is used as a dispersion medium. The mass-transfer performance of the new extractor was tested with 30% TBP (in kerosene)nitric acid-H2O as an experimental system. The overall mass-transfer coefficient and the equipment efficiency were calculated with the concentrations of the inlet and outlet. The extractor was designed and constructed with two special inner elements for improving the performance further. The effects of the transmembrane pressure, the continuous-phase flow rate, and the geometric parameters of the inner elements on the mass-transfer performance, as well as on the flux of the dispersion phase, are discussed. The experimental results showed that very higher efficiency was reached. The inner elements could improve the mass-transfer performance greatly by changing the two-phase contact status. The results suggested that the mass-transfer process could be completed quickly while the drop size was in the range of micrometers. In addition, the flux of the dispersed phase was mainly influenced by the transmembrane pressure, not by the equipment structures, inner elements, and the continuous-phase flow rate. The new extractor can be operated with very higher efficiency and higher flux, and the efficiency can be predicted with a cubic polynomial. (C) 2004 American Institute of Chemical Engineers.