Performance and stability study of vegetable oil based Supported Liquid Membrane

A study on Supported Liquid Membrane (SLM) system has been performed for removal and recovery of a textile dye Red 4G from the aqueous solution. Renewable, non toxic, natural vegetable oils as liquid membrane phase have been incorporated in Polypropylene(PP) supported teflon membrane. Membrane phase composition, pH of feed solution, acid/base concentration in the striping solution and initial dye concentrations-are systematically investigated using vegetable oil based SLM during the extraction of dye. Stability study of SLM is carried out with 'wet surface' and `dry surface' membranes. The Scanning electron microscope (SEM) combined with Energy dispersive X-ray (EDX) analysis of membranes after continuous operation shows that the membrane phases are retained within the membrane pores and only small losses of the membrane phase initially located on the surface are observed. These observations are in complete agreement with the membrane phase losses determined by mass balance.