Comportamiento de membranas cerámicas de pervaporación en la deshidratación de disolventes orgánicos industriales

Abstract

This work has been performed within the projects PPQ2000-0240 and BQU2002-03357, financed by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Education, as well as the short research stays performed at the Institut Européen des Membranes (Montpellier, France) under the supervision of Dr. Anne Julbe and at the Chemical Engineering Department of the Hiroshima University (Japan) under the direction of Prof. Masashi Asaeda. Pervaporation is the selective evaporation of one component of a liquid mixture by a membrane, which is in direct contact with the liquid phase. This work proposes the use of ceramic membranes to improve the pervaporative dehydration of organic solvents. With this purpose, the work has been developed into several stages: 1. Functional characterisation of PV commercial ceramic membranes. 2. Synthesis of silica-zirconia, SiO2-ZrO2, membranes, as the literature points out to a higher stability of mixed oxide membranes at high water contents and temperatures. SiO2-ZrO2 membranes were prepared by two routes of the sol-gel method: (1) polymeric gel route and slip casting and (2) colloidal sol route and hot coating, The morphology and structure of these membranes were characterised by static procedures (FE-SEM, N2 adsorption-desorption, FTIR, XRD). The functional characterisation in PV of these membranes was performed. 3. Development of PV ceramic membranes on industrial applications, mainly the valorisation of a residual ketonic stream coming from the production process of rubber antioxidants, and the recovery of THF and acetone from industrial effluents contaminated with water. In the case of the ketonic mixture, the performance of the commercial PV silica membranes was analysed at different working temperatures. 4. Mathematical modelling of water flux across PV ceramic membranes, as a function of the temperature and water activity in the feed. 5. Validation of this model to the PV data obtained for the commercial silica membranes and also for the SiO2-ZrO2 non-commercial membranes, with acceptable accuracy. This work contributes to achieve a deeper insight on the structure-performance relationship of PV ceramic hydrophilic membranes, in order to improve their qualities towards implementation into actual industrial processes where these membranes can solve significant problems within economic and environmental contexts.