Modelling of membrane and comparison to the experiment

Abstract : Porous media in extraction and especially pertraction are often suspected to add unnecessary diffusive resistance and considerably slow down extraction kinetics. In the practical case of the separation of rare earth compounds from water into an organic phase, the use of specific ion binding ligands in high concentrations is required. These tend to form complex liquid crystalline phases preferentially at ion-rich locations inside a pertraction membrane. We will report on the modeling of the behavior of such fluids in the case of pertraction as well as in the case of a miniaturized pertraction device. We will show that diffusive and reactive solute transport can be accurately simulated without any free parameters. Overall, this work can be generalize as enabling the measurement of solute transfer rates at the liquid-liquid interface, a key parameter in pertraction and membrane separation which is difficult to measure using classic methods of extraction.