CHE338/CE8331, Membrane Technology 1

Assignment #2
Due Date: April 6, 4 PM

Problem 1. (25 points) Gas permeation

A separation of N2 from CH4 takes place through a polymide polymer membrane at 30oC. The permeance
values for N2 and CH4 are 50,000 and 10,000 barrer/cm respectively.

a) Find the selectivity

b) Determine the membrane surface area in m2
c) Determine CH4 in the permeate in kmol/h

Problem 2. (25 points) Estimate the maximum pore size of a membrane for N2 separation in which Knudsen
diffusion is effective. The diameter of N2 is 0.364 nm.

Problem 3. (25 points) Reverse Osmosis (RO) without concentration polarization

You use a stirred batch module to remove sodium chloride from water. With a high stirred speed, you eliminate
the effect of concentration polarization during the RO filtration. The initial weight fraction of 0.0075 sodium
chloride is fed to the batch and the rejection coefficient is 0.98. For a dilute system, osmosis pressure can be
estimated by = where = 15.45 . The operation runs at room temperature, 20oC. Additionally,
before this purification of the water, you ran pure water through the membrane with a pressure drop of 15 atm
and the measured water flux was 510 g/(m2 ).

Estimate the retentate pressure with Pp=0.15 atm and the cut = 0.20 to have the solvent flux of 420 g/(m 2 ).

Problem 4. (25 points) Reverse Osmosis with Concentration polarization

You are setting up a RO stirred batch module to concentrate a dilute sucrose mixture. Initially, you ran the pure
water through a membrane used for the RO filtration and measured the flux and pressure drop 100 atm and
1.2x10-3 g/cm2s) respectively. You plan to operate the filtration at the following conditions: M = 3.0, cut = 0.65
a feed mixture of 0.025 wt, a mass rate of 4.5 kg/s, and a pressure drop of 80 atm . The operation will run at
room temperature, 20oC.

Determine the surface area of the membrane required with = 3.45 (1/)