Progress in Filtration and Separation

5. Hydrophobic Pervaporation

Hydrophobic pervaporation, i.e., the selective removal of organic compounds from an aqueous solution by pervaporation, is less applied than dehydration even though it is technically on a similar level. This is related to the applications: removal of organics such as the VOC fraction from wastewater, for example, is feasible but not economically viable. Some studies on this subject were made, however, such as the use of hydrophobic pervaporation for industrial wastewater streams of water-chloroform, and of water-methyl-isobutyl ketone (Lipnizki and Field, 2002). When the extracted solvent can be recovered, as studied here, the process proves to be also economically interesting. For the wastewater streams considered, ...