Recovery of Alcohol Ethoxylates Nonionic Surfactant using Co-Current Vacuum Stripping

  • Suratsawadee Kungsanan Department of Chemical Engineering, Prince of SongklaUniversity, HatYai, Songkhla, 90112, Thailand
  • Sirinthip Kittisrisawai The Petroleum and Petrochemical College and The National Center of Excellence for Petroleum, Petrochemicals, and Advanced Materials, Chulalongkorn University, Soi Chula 12, Pathumwan, Bangkok, 10330, Thailand
  • Boonyarach Kitiyanan The Petroleum and Petrochemical College and The National Center of Excellence for Petroleum, Petrochemicals, and Advanced Materials, Chulalongkorn University, Soi Chula 12, Pathumwan, Bangkok, 10330, Thailand
  • Thirasak Rirksomboon The Petroleum and Petrochemical College and The National Center of Excellence for Petroleum, Petrochemicals, and Advanced Materials, Chulalongkorn University, Soi Chula 12, Pathumwan, Bangkok, 10330, Thailand
  • Somchai Osuwan The Petroleum and Petrochemical College and The National Center of Excellence for Petroleum, Petrochemicals, and Advanced Materials, Chulalongkorn University, Soi Chula 12, Pathumwan, Bangkok, 10330, Thailand
  • John F. Scamehorn Institute for Applied Surfactant Research, University of Oklahoma, 100 E. Boyd, Norman, Oklahoma, 73019, USA
Keywords: Nonionic Surfactant, VOCs, Co-current Vacuum Stripping, Cloud point extraction

Abstract

Cloud point extraction (CPE) has shown to be an effective technique to remove organic compounds from contaminated water using nonionic surfactant as a separating agent. To make this process more economically attractive, the spent nonionic surfactants should be recycled and reused. This work utilized a packed column operated under vacuum in co-current mode to remove the volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from the secondary alcohol ethoxylates, AEs, coacervate solution. The co-current operation can effectively avoid plugging, excessive foaming, and flooding. The selected volatile organic contaminants are aromatic hydrocarbons such as benzene, toluene, and ethylbenzene. The hydrophobic properties of the VOCs are described by an octanol-water partition coefficient (Kow). The results show that as the Kow increases, the Ks substantially increases while the Happ of the VOCs significantly decreases. The reduction of VOCs volatilization is possibly due to greater partitioning of the VOCs into surfactant micelles. The similar trend is also observed in the continuous operation. The results show that as the Kow increases, the percentage of VOCs removal and the Kxa decrease due to the VOCs’ hydrophobic effect. The removal percentages of the VOCs vary from 60 to 90%. The R2 of the log-log and semi-log relationships between Kow and studied parameters are observed in the range of 0.96-0.99.

References

1. P. Hunter and S.T. Oyama: Control of Volatile Organic Compound Emissions (2000).
2. P. Trakultamupatam, J.F. Scamehorn, and S. Osuwan: Sep. Sci. Technol. 37 (2002) 1291.
3. P. Trakultamupatam, J.F. Scamehorn, and S. Osuwan: Sep. Sci. Technol. 39 (2004) 479.
4. P. Trakultamupatam, J.F. Scamehorn, and S. Osuwan: Sep. Sci. Technol. 39 (2004) 501.
5. U.N. Choori, J.F. Scamehorn, J.F. O’Haver, and J.H. Harwell: Ground Water Monit. Rem. 18 (1998) 157.
6. S. Kungsanant, B. Kitiyanan, T. Rirksomboon, S. Osuwan, and J.F. Scamehorn: Sep. Purif. Technol. 62 (2008) 370.
7. S. Kungsanant, B. Kitiyanan, T. Rirksomboon, S. Osuwan, and J.F. Scamehorn: Sep. Purif. Technol. 66 (2009) 510.
8. J. Jiang, L.M. Vane, and S.K. Sikdar: J. Membr. Sci. 136 (1997) 233.
9. J. Li and B. Chen: J. Colloid Interf. Sci. 263 (2003) 625.
10. P. Taechangam, J.F. Scamehorn, S. Osuwan, and T. Rirksomboon: Sep. Sci. Technol. 43 (2008) 3601.
11. G.A. Robbins, S.Wang, and J.D. Stuart: Anal. Chem. 65 (1993) 3113.
12. L.M. Vane and E.L. Giroux: J. Chem. Eng. Data 45 (2000) 38.
Published
2011-12-31
How to Cite
Kungsanan, S., Kittisrisawai, S., Kitiyanan, B., Rirksomboon, T., Osuwan, S., & Scamehorn, J. F. (2011). Recovery of Alcohol Ethoxylates Nonionic Surfactant using Co-Current Vacuum Stripping. ASEAN Journal of Chemical Engineering, 11(1), 22-27. Retrieved from https://journal.ugm.ac.id/v3/AJChE/article/view/8077
Issue
Vol 11 No 1 (2011)
Section
Articles

Copyright holder for articles is ASEAN Journal of Chemical Engineering. Articles published in ASEAN J. Chem. Eng. are distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) license. 

Authors agree to transfer all copyright rights in and to the above work to the ASEAN Journal of Chemical Engineering Editorial Board so that the Editorial Board shall have the right to publish the work for non-profit use in any media or form. In return, authors retain: (1) all proprietary rights other than copyright; (2) re-use of all or part of the above paper in their other work; (3) right to reproduce or authorize others to reproduce the above paper for authors’ personal use or for company use if the source and the journal copyright notice is indicated, and if the reproduction is not made for the purpose of sale.