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 haveattractedattentionin the separation ofmetal ionsfromaqueoussolutions.Thesesystems,andinparticularliquidmembranes,canofferanalernativein many fields according to their higher performance compared to other systems. Polymer inclusion membranes (PIMs) are a type of liquidmembranes (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 simultaneouslyinonestepusingsimplesystems. In this work, we explore for the first time the use of polymeric inclusion membrane base on PVC/Aliquat-336intomultiframeflatsheetmembranecontactor(MF-FSMC).Theinvestigationfocuseson the transport of Cr(VI) and the design ofexperiment (DOE) for thefeed and receiving phase, which was usedtooptimizetheextractionparameters.