Pervaporation properties of PDMS membranes for removal of benzene from aqueous solution: Experimental and modeling

Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) pervaporation membranes were employed to remove benzene from aqueous solution. A predictive model was proposed based on solution-diffusion mechanism to predict mass transfer during pervaporation process. The solubility of components in the membrane was described by UNIFAC-FV model, and the diffusion coefficients in polymeric membrane were calculated by free volume theory. The effects of feed concentration and operating temperature on pervaporation properties were investigated to validate the model. It has shown that the proposed model can be applied to select membrane materials and predict the permeation flux and selectivity of components through the polymeric membrane.