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Pervaporation separation of n ‐heptane/organosulfur mixtures with PDMS membrane: Experimental and modelling
Author(s) -
Huang Junqi,
Li Jiding,
Chen Jian,
Zhan Xia,
Chen Cuixian
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
the canadian journal of chemical engineering
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.404
H-Index - 67
eISSN - 1939-019X
pISSN - 0008-4034
DOI - 10.1002/cjce.20184
Subject(s) - pervaporation , polydimethylsiloxane , membrane , organosulfur compounds , heptane , diffusion , polymer , chemical engineering , gasoline , chemistry , materials science , thermodynamics , chromatography , organic chemistry , permeation , sulfur , engineering , biochemistry , physics
In this paper, polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) pervaporation membrane was employed to simulate the desulfurization process of gasoline where n ‐heptane was selected to stand for gasoline. A modified solution–diffusion model is proposed to account for the mass transport of penetrants in the polymer membrane. In the model, the group contribution method (the UNIFAC‐ZM model) is applied to calculate the activity of penetrants in the polymer membrane, and the free volume theory with some modifications is employed to describe the diffusion behaviour of the penetrants. The effects of operating temperature and feed concentration on pervaporation properties were investigated to validate the model. It has been shown that the results predicted by the solution–diffusion model are in good agreement with the experimental values.