Charun Bunyakan, Anuar bin Hassan, Juntima Chungsiriporn, and Janya Intamanee

pp. 65 - 77

Abstract

Ammonia removal from skim latex is an essential step in skim block production process. In general,
skim latex contains about 0.4% ammonia by weight of skim latex and needs to be reduced in order to
minimize acid usage during rubber coagulation step. The method used to remove ammonia from skim latex
in many concentrated rubber latex plants is ammonia volatilization by agitating skim latex using a large
agitator in a mixing pool. In this research, a new method to remove ammonia from water by blowing wind
over the water surface was investigated. The effects of agitation speed and wind speed on overall mass transfer coefficient and removal rate of ammonia were investigated in a pilot scale experiment. The result
has shown that the overall mass transfer coefficient and the ammonia removal rate increase linearly with
increasing Reynolds number of air and liquid. However, the ammonia removal rate by using wind speed was
much higher than that given by agitation method. The wind speed method proposed in this study is then
recommended for ammonia removal from skim latex. Possible ways for applying the wind speed method for
skim latex production plant are also suggested. The relationship between the wind speed or Reynolds number
and the mass transfer coefficient can also be used to design the system for ammonia removal from water by
using wind speed.