Anawat Sungpet, Songpol Wongirung, Veerapol Seearamroongruang, and Natcha Kamphangseree

pp. 907 - 913

Abstract

Permeation of ethylbenzene, styrene and 1-hexene through perfluorosulfonate ionomer membranes
was carried out with the feed concentrations ranging from 1 M to pure. On comparison, fluxes of ethylbenzene through the Ag⁺
-form membrane were the lowest. Only a small increase in ethylbenzene flux
was observed after the feed concentration exceeded 3 M, indicating the existence of carrier saturation. The
increase in styrene flux was suppressed to some degree at high concentration driving forces. In contrast,
1-hexene flux was the highest and continued to increase even at very high feed concentrations. After the
experiments with pure feeds, extraction of the solutes from the membranes revealed that 62.5% of Ag⁺
ions reacted with 1-hexene as against 40.6% for styrene and 28.9% for ethylbenzene. Equilibrium constants, determined by distribution method, of 1-hexene, styrene and ethylbenzene were 129, 2.2 and 0.7 M^-1
respectively, which suggested that stability of the complex was a key factor in the carrier saturation
phenomenon.