The development of zeolite-filled sodium alginate composite membranes for pervaporation separation of binary liquid mixtures

A membrane is a selective barrier it allows some things to pass through but stops others when a driving force is applied across the membrane. Membrane processes offer many advantages over traditional separation processes such as high selectivity, energy savings, average cost-performance ratio and modularity. Pervaporation, which is carried out by polymeric membrane separation, is a technology that can be used to separate organic aqueous mixtures, to remove organics from water, and to separate organic/organic mixtures. Zeolites are uniform, micropores in the molecular size and inorganic crystals with high mechanical, thermal and chemical stability. Zeolite has properties such as being able to be molecular sieve, ion exchange, selective adsorption and being a catalyst. The addition of zeolite generally increases pervaporation flow with little or no decrease in selectivity, or increases selectivity with little or no decrease in flux. Since the organic-inorganic hybrid structure of a composite membrane combines the high separation performance of inorganic materials with adsorption properties such as zeolite and the appropriate preparation properties of organic materials, have the potential to improve the separation properties of filled membranes composed of porous particles dispersed in an organic polymeric structure. Pervaporation process, which can be used as an environmentally friendly and energy efficient technology, contains three steps: sorption, diffusion and desorption. Therefore, it is important to determine the sorption behavior of the membranes to be used in the pervaporation tests. In this study, sodium alginate membranes filled with zeolite 5A (synthetic) and polyvinyl alcohol were prepared and the sorption and pervaporation behavior of such membranes were investigated primarily for ethanol-water mixture