Pervaporative Dehydration of Methanol Using PVA/Nanoclay Mixed Matrix Membranes: Experiments and Modeling

Asmaa Selim; András Jozsef Toth; Daniel Fozer; Agnes Szanyi; Péter Mizsey

doi:10.3390/membranes10120435

Pervaporative Dehydration of Methanol Using PVA/Nanoclay Mixed Matrix Membranes: Experiments and Modeling

Membranes (Basel). 2020 Dec 17;10(12):435. doi: 10.3390/membranes10120435.

Authors

Asmaa Selim^{1

2}, András Jozsef Toth¹, Daniel Fozer¹, Agnes Szanyi¹, Péter Mizsey^{1

3}

Affiliations

¹ Environmental and Process Engineering Research Group, Department of Chemical and Environmental Process Engineering, Faculty of Chemical Technology and Biotechnology, Budapest University of Technology and Economics, H-1521 Budapest, Hungary.
² Chemical Engineering Department, National Research Centre, 33 El Buhouth Street, Cairo 12622, Egypt.
³ Institute of Chemistry, University of Miskolc, H-3513 Miskolc, Hungary.

Abstract

Encouraged by the industrial problem of removing water from methanol solutions, a simple exfoliation method is applied to prepare polyvinyl alcohol (PVA)/laponite nanoclay mixed matrix membranes (MMMs). The membranes are used for the pervaporative dehydration of the methanol-water solution. The influence of the nanoclay content on the pervaporation performance is investigated. The results show that the PVA10 membrane containing 10 wt% Laponite loading exhibits excellent separation efficiency; therefore, all the experimental work is continued using the same membrane. Additionally, the effects of feed concentration and temperature on methanol dehydration performance are thoroughly investigated. The temperatures are ranging from 40-70 °C and the water feed concentrations from 1-15 wt% water. A maximum separation factor of 1120 can be observed at 40 °C and the feed water concentration of 1 wt%. Remarkably, two solution-diffusion models, the Rautenbach (Model I) and modified method by Valentínyi et al. (Model II), are used and compared to evaluate and describe the pervaporation performance of the mixed matrix membrane. Model II proves to be more appropriate for the modeling of pervaporative dehydration of methanol than Model I. This work demonstrates that PVA/nanoclay mixed matrix membranes prepared can efficiently remove water from methanol aqueous solution with pervaporation and the whole process can be accurately modeled with Model II.

Keywords: laponite nano-silicate clay; methanol dehydration; mixed matrix membranes; pervaporation mathematical modeling; solution–diffusion model.