Molecular separation of ibuprofen and 4-isobutylacetophenone using octanol organic solution by porous polymeric membranes

PLoS One. 2020 Aug 31;15(8):e0237271. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0237271. eCollection 2020.

Abstract

Molecular separation of pharmaceutical contaminants from water has been recently of great interest to alleviate their detrimental impacts on environment and human well-being. As the novelty, this investigation aims to develop a mechanistic modeling approach and consequently its related CFD-based simulations to evaluate the molecular separation efficiency of ibuprofen (IP) and its metabolite 4-isobutylacetophenone (4-IBAP) from water inside a porous membrane contactor (PMC). For this purpose, octanol has been applied as an organic phase to extract IP and 4-IBAP from the aqueous solution due to high solubility of solutes in octanol. Finite element (FE) technique is used as a promising tool to simultaneously solve continuity and Navier-Stokes equations and their associated boundary conditions in tube, shell and porous membrane compartments of the PMC. The results demonstrated that the application of PMC and liquid-liquid extraction process can be significantly effective due to separating 51 and 54% of inlet IP and 4-IBAP molecules from aqueous solution, respectively. Moreover, the impact of various operational / functional parameters such as packing density, the number of fibrous membrane, the module length, the membrane porosity / tortuosity, and ultimately the aqueous solution flow rate on the molecular separation efficiency of IP and 4-IBAP is studied in more details.

MeSH terms

  • Acetophenones / isolation & purification*
  • Anti-Inflammatory Agents, Non-Steroidal / isolation & purification*
  • Ibuprofen / isolation & purification*
  • Liquid-Liquid Extraction / methods
  • Membranes, Artificial*
  • Octanols / chemistry
  • Polymers / chemistry*
  • Porosity
  • Solubility
  • Solutions

Substances

  • Acetophenones
  • Anti-Inflammatory Agents, Non-Steroidal
  • Membranes, Artificial
  • Octanols
  • Polymers
  • Solutions
  • 4-isobutylacetophenone
  • Ibuprofen

Grants and funding

The author(s) received no specific funding for this work.