Solvent recovery from soybean oil/n-hexane mixtures using hollow fiber membrane

• Autor(a) principal: Tres,M. V.
• Data de Publicação: 2012
• Outros Autores: Nobrega,R., Carvalho,R. B., Oliveira,J. V., Luccio,M. Di
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Brazilian Journal of Chemical Engineering
• Texto Completo: http://old.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0104-66322012000300015
• topic: Soybean oil; n-Hexane; Solvent recovery; Hollow fiber; Ultrafiltration; Membrane conditioning

In this work, the separation of refined soybean oil/n-hexane mixtures was investigated using a commercial hollow fiber ultrafiltration membrane 50 kDa. Three alcohols with different chain lengths were tested for the conditioning of the membrane; n-propyl alcohol showed the highest n-hexane permeate flux after conditioning. There was a decrease in the rejection and an increase in permeate flux over time. This behavior may be related to swelling and membrane plasticization by the oil. Rejections from 10.0 to 28.7% and total permeate fluxes from 12.2 to 65.3 kg/m²h were observed. An increase in the oil/n-hexane mass ratio and the pressure caused an increase in the rejection and permeate total flux for most assays. No degradation was observed in the membrane module.