A re-appraisal of modelling in a liquid surfactant membrane waste water clean up process

Two categories of model have been developed to describe the mass transfer process in emulsion liquid membrane extraction of phenols/amines from waste water. In the first the reaction between the transferred solutes and the trapping agent in the internal phase is assumed to be irreversible while in the second a reversible reaction is involved. Generally the various authors have tested the proposed models against their own experimental data. The present study is an attempt to investigate the efficacy of the reversible reaction model of Bunge and Noble, which is simpler to use and requires input of less parameters to predict the experimental data reported by different authors. It is shown that by introducing a shape factor into the model for the effective diffusivity of solute within the macrodrop, it is possible to use this model to simulate experimental data of other groups reasonably well.