Mass transfer fundamentals in pervaporation, perstraction and sorption: A unified approach

The high affinity between an organic solute and a polymeric sorbent or membrane is the basis for separating organic contaminants from water via sorption, pervaporation and perstraction. These processes all share the same features of dissolution and diffusion, and thus their mass transfer characteristics can be correlated. However, they are often dealt with independently, and the research findings from one process are rarely applied to the other. The permeability coefficient in perstraction (for liquid permeation) based on concentration gradient as the driving force for mass transfer and the permeability coefficient for pervaporative transport expressed customarily in analog to vapor permeation can hardly be compared directly, and sometimes seemingly contradictive trends in temperature dependencies of the permeability coefficients for the two process modes may result. Looking into the mass transfer fundamentals pertaining to sorption, pervaporation and perstraction, this work attempted to provide a unified approach to the mass transfer in all these processes. While the permeability coefficient in pervaporation uses equivalent vapor pressure gradient across the membrane as the driving force, this work provided a generalized treatment by taking into account the sorption constants embedded in the permeability coefficients of the different processes so that the performance parameter for one process could be applied to another, which would be especially useful for screening and developing appropriate membrane/sorbent materials. In addition, the relationships among the selectivities of these separation processes were elucidated, which allowed for an intuitive illustration of how the process selectivity changed due to the process mode. Aniline removal from water via pervaporation, perstraction and sorption using a poly(ether-b-amide) membrane/sorbent was used as an example to illustrate and validate the approach.