Pervaporation separation of water-acetic acid mixtures using polymeric membranes

Acetic acid is one of the basic chemical commodities having great industrial importance and its recycling after separation from aqueous stream is industrially important. In industrial unit operations, wastewater is almost always contaminated with acetic acid, the separation of which is difficult by conventional distillation methods because of their close relative volatility. Thus the conventional extractive distillation methods to separate them become expensive since they consume high energy. Due to these reasons chemical industries are always looking for viable alternative methods to separate them. Pervaporation (PV) separation, a technique that is based on membrane processes, becomes more attractive in solving this problem because this process is more economical and environmentally clean. This review summarizes the published literature on PV separation of water-acetic acid mixtures and compares the important published results from 1990 to date.