Removal of Dye from Synthetic Wastewater by Liquid Membrane

Abstract

New technologies have risen into popularity causing the Liquid membrane techniques to evolve over other separation techniques due to its high selectivity and recovery, increased fluxes, and reduced investment and operating cost. This work focuses on extracting Methylene Blue (MB), a cationic dye using a simple BLM separation technique from its aqueous phase. It combines extraction and stripping in a single unit operation. The feed phase was an aqueous solution of MB, the solvent chosen was soybean oil for the liquid/organic membrane phase, and tri-octyl amine acted as a carrier. The strip phase was a hydrochloric acid solution for this study. A two-phase equilibrium study was done to choose the correct solvent, carrier, and receiving phase (soybean oil, tri-octyl amine, and HCl) were chosen, which was then followed by a three-phase study. Effect of various parameters like equilibrium time, feed and stripping phase pH, stirring speed, carrier concentration, initial feed concentration, and strip phase concentration were all studied to find out the most optimum working condition for maximum extraction and recovery of MB. The removal efficiency of MB by using soybean oil was found as 92%, at the optimum process conditions for the transport of MB were found as follows: pH in the feed phase (11), pH in the stripping phase (5), initial concentration of MB (20 ppm), carrier concentration (7%) (v/v) TOA and stirring speed (250 rpm), respectively.