Behavior of hydrophobic ionic liquids as liquid membranes on phenol removal: Experimental study and optimization Original Research Article

Room temperature ionic liquids show potential as an alternative to conventional organic membrane solvents mainly due to their properties of low vapor pressure, low volatility and they are often stable. In the present work, the technical feasibilities of room temperature ionic liquids as bulk liquid membranes for phenol removal were investigated experimentally. Three ionic liquids with high hydrophobicity were used and their phenol removal efficiency, membrane stability and membrane loss were studied. Besides that, the effects of several parameters, namely feed phase pH, feed concentration, NaOH concentration and stirring speeds on the performance of best ionic liquid membrane were also evaluated. Lastly, an optimization study on bulk ionic liquid membrane was conducted and the maximum phenol removal efficiency was compared with the organic liquid membranes. The preliminary study shows that high phenol extraction and stripping efficiencies of 96.21% and 98.10%, respectively can be achieved by ionic liquid membrane with a low membrane loss which offers a better choice to organic membrane solvents.