Continuous Liquid-Liquid Extraction and In-situ Membrane Separation of Miscible Liquid Mixtures

Separation operations account for about one quarter of all in-plant energy consumption in the United States. Conventional liquid-liquid extractions require either thermal or chemical treatment, both of which have a large environmental impact and carbon footprint. Consequently, there is a great need to develop sustainable, clean methods of separating miscible liquid mixtures. The best opportunities to achieve this lie in replacing high-energy separation operations (e.g., distillation) with low-energy alternatives such as liquid-liquid extraction (LLE). One of the primary design challenges in LLE is to maximize the interfacial area between two immiscible (e.g., polar and non-polar) liquids for efficient mass transfer. Emulsifying the feed and the extractant, especially with a surfactant, offers a large interfacial area, but subsequent separation of emulsions can be energy-intensive and expensive. Thus, emulsions are typically avoided in conventional extraction operations. Herein, we discuss a novel, easily scalable, platform separation methodology termed CLEANS (Continuous Liquid-liquid Extraction And iN-situ membrane Separation). CLEANS integrates emulsion-enhanced extraction with continuous, gravity-driven, membrane-based separation of emulsions into a single unit operation which can significantly enhance extraction (by > 250% in certain cases), even for systems where the best extractants for miscible liquid mixtures are known. Utilizing the CLEANS methodology, we demonstrate continuous separation of a wide range of miscible liquid mixtures, including soluble organic molecules from oils, alcohols from esters, and even azeotropes.