Year : 2021
Mentors : Sanjay Patel
Students involved : 18BCH045 - Krishna H Patel, 18BCH054 - Zulfiqar M Rokadia
The development of membrane science and technology experienced a long history in laboratory studies before realization of its industrial applications. Today, membranes are widely accepted as the best available technology for water and wastewater treatments. In the twenty-first century, the world is facing great challenges in the aspects of energy, water and the environment. Membrane separation process is a process where a membrane is used to separate the components in a solution by rejecting unwanted substances and allowing the others to pass through the membrane. Membrane performance can be measured by the ability of the membrane to prevent, regulate, or enhance the permeation. Membrane performance can be measured by the ability of the membrane to prevent, regulate, or enhance the permeation. Several factors control the rate of permeation and the transport mechanism. These include the magnitude of the driving force and the size of the permeating molecule relative to the size of the available permanent. In this project, we will apply membrane technology for solvent separation i.e., azeotrope and chemical separation. In this project, we will prepare membranes using the phase inversion method. This membrane preparation method is the simplest, efficient and universal method. Water will be used as solvent and different polymeric materials with different concentrations will be tested. The best polymer concentration membrane will be then compared with the conventional processes i.e., distillation process. By this project, a better approach to separate a particular chemical mixture is expected. At the end of our project, we will discuss a method to separate the given chemicals through membrane technology. A comparison of prepared membranes with the commercial membranes and comparison of proposed membranes with extractive distillation will also be reported. The alternative distillation process will also be simulated using Aspen Plus/DWSIM. The cost analysis of the proposed membrane will also be performed.