Extraction with emulsion liquid membranes in a hollow-fiber contactor

Aqueous streams contaminated with heavy metal ions may be produced as effluents from industrial plants or during attempts to remediate solids loaded with heavy metals, such as contaminated soils. Metals of particular concern include copper, zinc, cadmium, nickel, mercury, lead, and chromium. An extraction system for heavy metals recovery from dilute waste streams, which can accomplish both extraction and stripping in one step, is an emulsion liquid membrane (ELM). The ELM extraction in a stirred contactor has two main disadvantages. On prolonged contact with the feed stream (greater than 10 min), the emulsion swells with water, increasing the internal-phase volume and in a stirred contactor the internal-phase contents leak into the feed stream because of membrane rupture. This work focuses on the use of microporous hollow-fiber contactors (HFC) as an alternate contacting method to direct batch/continuous dispersion of emulsion liquid membranes. This method of contact will retain the primary advantage that emulsion liquid membrane separations offer, namely, extraction and stripping in a single processing step which circumvents the limits of equilibrium inherent in conventional solvent extraction. However, because hollow-fiber membranes, by their design, allow for high surface area contacting without the high shear rates typically encountered with an agitator, this will result in improved efficiency of extraction by reducing membrane swelling and leakage.