Design of experiment for chromium (VI) removal with PVC / Aliquat 336 polymeric inclusion membrane in MF-FSMC module

In the two recent decades, membrane contactors have attracted attention in the separation of metal ions from aqueous solutions. These systems, and in particular liquid membranes, can offer an alernative in many fields according to their higher performance compared to other systems. Polymer inclusion membranes (PIMs) are a type of liquid membranes (Lopez et al. 2010; Kaya et al. 2016) composed of a liquid phase and a base polymer. They are considered to be an atractive green alternative for solvent extraction (Ines et al. 2017). PIMs have been in use for long time and their development is constantly increasing (Kebiche et al. 2010; Anane et al.2015). PIMs allow extraction and backextraction to occur simultaneously in one step using simple systems. In this work, we explore for the first time the use of polymeric inclusion membrane base on PVC/Aliquat-336 into multiframe flat sheet membrane contactor (MF-FSMC). The investigation focuses on the transport of Cr(VI) and the design of experiment (DOE) for the feed and receiving phase, which was used to optimize the extraction parameters.