Membrane assisted process intensification and optimization for removal and recovery of phenol from industrial effluents

The best method of preserving the environment is not to discharge any contaminant but to recover them as value from the effluent streams thereby adopting circular economy. This calls for developing new strategies including intensification of conventional processes to make the recovery of contaminants cost effective and environmentally friendly. In this context, experimental studies are reported with respect to conventional solvent extraction and membrane assisted solvent extraction for recovering phenol from effluent streams. Initial studies are carried out with aqueous solutions of phenol with concentrations up to 500 mg/L using hydrophobic polyvinylidene fluoride based hollow fiber membrane element in tandem with conventional solvent extraction using 1- hexanol as solvent. The operating parameters for the membrane assisted solvent extraction were optimized in parallel with conventional solvent extraction using the statistical tool, response surface methodology to provide a comparative assessment highlighting the advantages of membrane assisted solvent extraction in terms of energy consumption, operational simplicity and environmental friendliness. The studies were validated using real effluents obtained from a formaldehyde resin manufacturer. The comparative study highlights the specific advantages and demonstrates the superiority of membrane assisted solvent extraction using a real industrial effluent. It was observed that more than 98 % of phenol could be removed from effluent in membrane assisted solvent extraction and recover about 90 %, continuously allowing the recycle of the solvent. Being closed loop operation, no solvent is exposed to the environment making the process environmentally friendly operation. The mechanism of mass transfer in membrane contactors follows resistance in series model and the experimental values of mass transfer coefficient were estimated to be between 1.7 × 10 −7 and 2.2 × 10 −7 m/s, whereas the empirical values were around 1.3 × 10 −7 m/s.