Permeability Profile based on Morphology Structure of Polyethersulfone Membrane on Concentrating the Tocopherol Solution

Separation technique by membrane technology has been widely applied for separation and purification of minor components from vegetable oil. Membrane was prepared and modified in several way in order to improve the filtration performance in purification process of vegetable oil. In this work, the filtration performance of three types of polyethersulfone hollow fiber membrane was investigated. The main objective of this research was to study the effect of membranes type on the filtration performance of tocopherol solution. Three series of filtration experiment were conducted by using fabricated membrane by dissolving of polyethersulfone (PES) in N-methyl pyrrolydone (NMP) with different polymer composition. The membranes was M1 = PES 20 % + NMP, M2 = PES 18 % + NMP, and M3 = PES 20 %+ Polyvinyl pyrrolidone (PVP 5 %) + NMP. The difference structure of membrans was confirmed by scanning electron microscopy measurement. The permeability profile of tocopherol solution of 500 ppm was observed by using a single module of hollow fiber membrane with filtration flow of pressure driven inside (PDI). It is shown that, the permeability of tocopherol solution was maximum and stable using PES membrane was composed by M3 system. Moreover, the improvement of tocopherol concentration in retentate solution was about two times higher than that the original solution that was obtained from filtration system of M1 membrane.