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Liquid Membranes and Ionic Liquids for Selective Downstream Processing

Objective

Downstream processing is still one of the major challenges not only for chemical and biotechnological production processes, but also for wastewater treatment. Very often the treatment of aqueous process streams, which typically are obtained from biotransformations or from wastewater treatment, is necessary for the removal of either hydrophobic or hydrophilic compounds, which may be present at various concentration levels. The present proposal aims to combine recent developments in the field of membrane technology such as nanofiltration, liquid membranes or pervaporation with the use of ionic liquids for providing novel solutions for downstream processing or process intensification. The major objective of the project is to investigate the development and application of supported liquid membranes on the base of ionic liquids. When using liquid membranes the selectivity of the separation is not based on the solid support of a given membrane, but on the properties of the liquid. Liquid membranes offer a range of possible advantages, such as better control of the selectivity.
The compounds to be separated may be products of biotransformations and fermentation processes or renewable materials. Compounds of interest are carbohydrates, chiral alcohols and amines and more complex metabolites, such as antibiotics. The potential of these new types of liquid membranes will also be tested for e.g. extraction of heavy metals from aqueous streams (wastewater). The potential of ionic liquids in combination with pervaporation shall be explored. First results indicate that volatile compounds can be removed from ionic liquids by pervaporation. Due to their negligible vapour pressure and relatively high viscosity ionic liquids may be used as pervaporation membranes. Together with the tunability of their solvation properties this will allow to improve the selectivity of this new type of pervaporation membrane.

Call for proposal

FP6-2002-MOBILITY-5
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Coordinator

ROSTOCK UNIVERSITY
EU contribution
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Address
Albert-Einstein-Str. 3a
n.a. ROSTOCK
Germany

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