Membrane processes have many industrial applications such as desalination, water treatment, biotechnology, food industry, pharmaceutical and power generation. The advantages of membrane processes include high selectivity, low operating costs and energy consumption. Membrane charge plays an important role in the membrane separation of ionic species. Therefore, understanding the interaction between ions and membrane charge is essential to improve the performance of the separation. This interaction is a function of pH concentration and depends on membrane type. The objective of this thesis was to investigate the role of membrane charge in separation of ionic species. Therefore the first step is to characterise membrane charge and then using the knowledge obtained along with separation data to gain insight on the mechanism governing the separation process of charged species by NF membranes. Finally correlations between membrane charge characterisation and separation process were achieved. The aim of creating such correlations is to reduce the amount of experimental work (only characterisation needed) required to evaluate the separation efficiency of a NF membrane either in a single salt system or mixtures which in turn saves time, labour work and money. The result obtained confirms the role of membrane charge in the separation of ionic species and provides insight into the mechanism of separation in NF membranes. In fact full explanations and quantitative analysis of the role of membrane charge was achieved in this thesis. To sum up, the knowledge obtained in this thesis is important for researchers and process engineers in industries such as desalination and water treatment plant as this helps to increase the efficiency of these plants and promote the use of membrane technology in the process industries. This can be done by right choice of membranes which fit the purpose and control of the feed parameters such as pH and concentration to maximize the efficiency.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:678265 |
| Date | January 2015 |
| Creators | Aljohani, Naser Hamzah |
| Publisher | Swansea University |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa42646 |
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