Pervaporation separation of n‐heptane/organosulfur mixtures with PDMS membrane: Experimental and modelling

In this paper, polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) pervaporation membrane was employed to simulate the desulfurization process of gasoline where n‐heptane was selected to stand for gasoline. A modified solution–diffusion model is proposed to account for the mass transport of penetrants in the polymer membrane. In the model, the group contribution method (the UNIFAC‐ZM model) is applied to calculate the activity of penetrants in the polymer membrane, and the free volume theory with some modifications is employed to describe the diffusion behaviour of the penetrants. The effects of operating temperature and feed concentration on pervaporation properties were investigated to validate the model. It has been shown that the results predicted by the solution–diffusion model are in good agreement with the experimental values.