Transport Processes in Liquid Membranes: Double Emulsion Separation Systems

The field of membrane technology is currently undergoing a rapid expansion of the areas of both research and industrial separation techniques. Developments in membrane technology have been guided by the need to develop relatively simple but highly selective separation techniques that are economically at tractive when compared to other separation processes. An area of current interestis the use of liquid membranes to separate species or to control mass transfer rates. Liquid membranes can be manipulated to selectively separate as pecific solute from a mixture, and even to extract a solute against its concentration gradient by coupling its flux to the flux of another solute or by coupling to another external force across the membrane such as an electrical field.