Removal of Pollutants and Recovery of Toxic Heavy Metals from Wastewater Using Microporous Hollow Fiber Modules

Multiphase equilibrium-based processes for separation and purification generally utilize dispersed systems in which one phase is dispersed in the other as bubbles or drops or thin films. Using microporous membranes, novel techniques have been developed such that multiphase processes can now be carried out in a nondispersive fashion for gas-liquid (Sirkar, 1992) and liquid-liquid (Prasad and Sirkar, 1992) contacting processes. Among such processes, only nondispersive solvent extraction of pollutants using microporous membranes will be of concern here. These processes employ immobilized immiscible phase interfaces at the pore mouths in a microporous membrane. Through such interfaces, solutes are extracted into the solvent as two immiscible phases flow on two sides of a microporous membrane. Many advantages of such a technique over conventional dispersion-based extractors have been summarized (Prasad and Sirkar, 1992).