Recovery of acetic acid over water by pervaporation with a combination of hydrophobic ionic liquids

The present work considers the application of an integrated pervaporation process to improve the pervaporation performance of acetic acid over water. This integrated pervaporation process was based on a plain PDMS membrane with a hydrophobic ionic liquid composed of a heterocyclic cation and [PF 6 ] - anions. The hydrophobic ionic liquid was introduced as the third phase between the aqueous phase and the plain PDMS membrane for improving mass-transfer of acetic acid from its aqueous matrix to the PDMS membrane. The primary results indicated that the ionic liquid as an extractant prior to pervaporation was favorable for improving the permeate selectivity and the permeate flux of acetic acid compared with using only a plain PDMS membrane. This performance could be attributed to the acetic acid concentrated and the water molecules rejected by ionic liquid prior to pervaporation. Extraction of a real effluent containing acetic acid from an antibiotic pharmaceutical plant was carried out using the above integrated pervaporation, and the results imply that this integrated pervaporation process could be scaled up for recovering acetic acids over its water-rich effluents.