Removal of phenol from aqueous solution using polymer inclusion membrane based on mixture of CTA and CA

Nowadays, there are increasingly stringent regulations requiring more and more treatment of industrial effluents to generate product waters which could be easily reused or disposed of to the environment without any harmful effects. In the present work, the removal of phenol from aqueous solution across polymer inclusion membrane (PIM), based on mixture of cellulose triacetate and cellulose acetate as support (75/25%), calix[4]resorcinarene derivative as a carrier and 2-nitrophenyl octyl ether (2-NPOE) as plasticizer was investigated. The experimental part of this investigation involved the influence of carrier nature, plasticizer concentration, pH phases, and phenol initial concentration on the removal efficiency of phenol from synthetic wastewater. A PIM containing 0.1 g (of mixture polymer), (0.15 g/g mixture of polymer) of carrier and (0.03 ml/g mixture of polymer) of 2-NPOE provided the highest percentage of phenol removal efficiency over a 6-day transport; the removal was found to be about 95%, indeed the removal was found to be highly dependent of pH phases. The feed solution in these transport experiments was at pH 2, while the stripping solution contained 0.20 M NaOH. This study claims that the PIM with a mixture of cellulose derivatives can be used effectively to remove phenols from wastewaters.