October 25, 2011

[APPLICATIONS OF NANOFILTRATIONS]

Table of Contents

Filtration ...................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 2 Nano Filtration .......................................................................................................................................................................................................... 2

Principle............................................................................................................................................................................................................... 2

Applications: ............................................................................................................................................................................................................... 3 Water Treatment ...................................................................................................................................................................................................... 3 Paper & Pulp Industry............................................................................................................................................................................................ 4 In Chemical Process Industry .............................................................................................................................................................................. 4 Metal & Acid Recovery ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 5
References ........................................................................................................................................................................................................... 5

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Filtration
Filtration is the process of removing one substance or material from another by mechanical means. or The act or process of filtering, especially the process of passing a liquid or gas, such as air, through a filter in order to remove solid particles.

Nano Filtration
Nanofiltration is a relatively recent membrane filtration process used most often with low total dissolved solids water such as surface water and fresh groundwater, with the purpose of softening (polyvalent cation removal) and removal of disinfection by-product precursors such as natural organicmatter and synthetic organic matter.

Principle

The preceding paragraphs have described the origins and nature of the generally accepted process called nanofiltration, which is a liquid-phase separation removing dissolved solids, carried out by means of membranes, with a relatively high transmembrane pressure. However, the progress of much of the filtration business is being driven by demands for finer and finer cutpoints, in both liquid and gas filtration, and these demands are now being met by the use of correspondingly finer fibres to make the filter media. Increasingly, these fibres have diameters of significantly less than one micrometre, and are therefore measured in nanometres, and are becoming commonly known as nanofibres. These are used to make composite filter media, with a web of nanofibres supported on a coarser substrate.

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Applications:
Nanofilterations has applications in a very vast range of scope, some of those are given below

Water treatment; Water reclamation, remediation and cleaner production with Nanofiltration; Nanofiltration in the food industry; Nanofiltration in the chemical processing industry; Nanofiltration in the pulp and paper industry; Nanofiltration bioreactors; Nanofiltration in metal and acid recovery;

Water Treatment

Nanofiltration (NF) is a rapidly advancing membrane separation technique for water and wastewater treatment as well as concentration/separation of antibiotics and pharmaceuticals due to its unique charge-based repulsion property and high rate of permeation. NF can be defined as a pressure driven process wherein the pore size of the membrane (0.5-1 nm) as well as the trans-membrane pressure (5-21 atm) lies between reverse osmosis and ultrafiltration. Due to the lower operating pressure and higher flow rates, nanofiltration is inexpensive when

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compared to reverse osmosis. NF membranes allow partial permeation of monovalent salts such as sodium chloride while rejecting bivalent salts and hardness to a greater extent from aqueous solutions. NF can lower TDS and hardness, reduce color and odor, and remove heavy metal ions from ground water. Other possible applications include treatment of effluents from textile dyeing, bulk drug and chemical process industries.

Paper & Pulp Industry

The paper pulp industry uses a very great quantity of water in its production processes, a quantity that the industry is striving to reduce, mainly by closing the water cycle a system in which the purification properties of NF have a major role.

In Chemical Process Industry

There are probably as many different applications in the whole chemical sector (including petrochemicals and pharmaceuticals) as in the rest of industry put together. Many more are still at the conceptual stage than are in plant use, but NF is a valuable contributor to the totality of the chemicals industry. The production of salt from natural brines uses NF as a purification process, while most chemical processes produce quite vicious wastes, from which valuable chemicals can usually be recovered by processes including NF. The high value of many of the products of the pharmaceutical and biotechnical sectors allows the use of NF in their purification processes.

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Metal & Acid Recovery

Separation of sulphuric acid from copper sulphate at high salt and acid concentrations was possible with flat-sheet NF membranes at 20 bar. The NF45, NF270 and Desal-5DK membranes retained copper sulphate effectively (9698% copper retention). Sulphuric acid retention remained low for all the studied membranes. Donnan forces were present and negative retention of sulphuric acid was observed when solutions that contained concentrated copper salt and dilute acid were filtered. As the total ion concentration and the ratio of acid/salt increased, the effect of the salt on acid retention decreased. The partial dissociation of sulphuric acid and copper sulphate decreased the effects created by the Donnan equilibrium. Experiments indicated that when concentrated acid solutions are nanofiltered, the separation is mainly determined by size effects and Donnan effects are marginal.

References

Unit Operations Of Chemical Engineering, 5th Ed, McCabe And Smith

Vol. 2, 5th Edt - Particle Technolgy and Separation Processes (2000)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanofiltration http://www.filtsep.com/view/717/what-is-nanofiltration-/ www.freshpatents.com

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