COMPARATIVE LIMITING FLUX ANALYSIS OF BLACK LIQUOR AND POLYETHYLENE GLYCOL IN ULTRAFILTRATION

Ultrafiltration of black liquor was carried out using an asymmetric membrane and the results were compared with that of polyethylene glycol, a standard macromolecule, in a stirred batch cell. The effects of system parameters, e.g., pressure, concentration and stirrer speed on permeate flux and solute rejection were studied extensively for both the solutes.

An osmotic pressure model was used to analyze experimental results. To take into account the phenomena of concentration polarization, an extra resistance term, called the polarization layer resistance (R_p), was incorporated into the model. The polarization layer resistance was found to be a function of flow regime and concentration at the membrane. To correlate these, the following two types of relationship were examined and tested with the experimental results,

and

where a, b, c, a₁, b₁, are constants.