Liquid-liquid extraction and air stripping in membrane contactor: application to aroma compounds recovery Original Research Article

This work focuses on a non-destructive process for recovering valuable aromatic fractions from odorous industry aqueous effluent. Non-dispersive extraction often selected aroma compound was carried out on very diluted model aqueous solutions, using membrane contactors, in two configurations: liquid-liquid and liquid-gas. Mass transfers from water to n-hexane, from water to miglyol (two solvents widely used in aromatic industry) and from water to air were studied using a cross-flow designed hollow fibre membrane contactor. The influence of physico-chemical properties of the aroma compounds and the influence of the solvent viscosity on mass transfer are discussed. Moreover, a resistance-in-series model has been applied and allowed to predict the mass transfer intensity in agreement with experimental values whatever the separation principle, liquid-liquid or liquid-gas.