Solvent recovery from soybean oil/n-butane mixtures using a hollow fiber ultrafiltration membrane

• Main Authors: M. V. Tres, J. C. Racoski, R. Nobrega, R. B. Carvalho, J. V. Oliveira, M. Di Luccio
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Brazilian Society of Chemical Engineering 2014-03-01
• Series: Brazilian Journal of Chemical Engineering
• Subjects: Soybean oil; n-butane; Solvent recovery; Hollow fiber; Membrane conditioning
• Online Access: http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0104-66322014000100022&lng=en&tlng=en

The aim of this work was the study on the separation of soybean oil/n-butane mixtures using a commercial hollow fiber ultrafiltration membrane (50 kDa). Oil/n-butane mixtures with mass ratios of 1:1 and 1:3 (wt), with the feed pressures of 5, 7 and 10 bar and transmembrane pressure of 1 bar were studied. Rejections of oil between 21 to 97.2%, oil fluxes between 0.04 and 0.98 kg/m² h and n-butane fluxes between 4 and 46 kg/m² h were observed, strongly influenced by the feed concentration. The increase in oil/n-butane mass ratio caused an increase in oil rejection and a decrease in the permeate flux of oil for most assays. The increase in the operating pressure caused an increase in oil flux and a consequent decrease in oil rejection. No degradation was observed in the membrane module during the operation with this non-aqueous feed stream, as confirmed by integrity tests.