Demulsification of Liquid Membrane Emulsion by Using Continuous High Voltage Coalescer

Emulsion liquid membrane is one of the processes that widely use in industrial separation process. In this study, high electrical field will be used as the method for demulsification process in liquid membrane system. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of several parameters in demulsification of water-in-oil emulsion such as concentration of surfactant, homogenizer time, electrical field voltage and frequency. The emulsion in this study contains aqueous solution (stripping phase) and oil phase. Kerosene as diluents and SPAN 80 as surfactant will be used in preparation of oil phase. Aqueous phase that will be used is sulfuric acid solution. The mixture of this solution will be mixed by using homogenizer at 5000 rpm. The emulsions that have been prepared will demulsified by using continuous high voltage coalescer. The results show that the optimum homogenizing time is 11 minute at frequency 4 kHz and voltage 6 kV. The percentage of emulsion breaking will decrease when the homogenizer time increase and concentration of surfactant increase. Percentage of emulsion breaking will increase when the electrical field voltage and frequency increase