Modeling of solvent and ionic fluxes in electronanofiltration

Electronanofiltration (ENF) is a new membrane separation process that uses an additional electric field between the permeate and retentate sides durin g nanofiltration. A recently published pioneering work gives the performanc e with single and mixed ionic solutions containing one monovalent cation an d one or two anions (mono- or/and divalent). It appears that the electric f ield leads to a net increase of cation flux and it decrease of anion permea tion at the same time if the cathode is placed on the permeate side. In rel ation with the well-known dependence of solvent flux on transmembrane press ure, these data open up potential applications of ENF for new integrated op erations of ion separation/concentration. In this paper a semiempirical mod el accounting for permeate and ionic fluxes is proposed. Based on the Stefa n-Maxwell approach, a simple set of linearized equations is developed that fits experimental data at various transmembrane pressure (Delta P), electri c fields (Delta U), and concentrations (C).