Acetone and Ethanol Extraction from Water by Means of Membrane: Modeling and Numerical Simulation

This study presents mass transfer modeling of solvent extraction by membrane contactors. The extraction system was a membrane contactor, an aqueous solution of ethanol and acetone as the feed and a near-critical phase of carbon dioxide as the solvent. Model was based on solving conservation equations for solutes in the membrane contactor. The equations of the model were solved by numerical method based on finite element method (FEM). The simulation results for ethanol and acetone showed an average deviation of 15.6% and 2.5% with the experimental data, respectively. Simulation results for the extraction of acetone are more accurate than those for ethanol mostly due to a better estimation of the transport properties. The developed mass transfer model is more accurate than other models and represents a general approach for simulation of membrane contactors.