Polydispersity effect in facilitated transport through liquid surfactant membranes

Abstract

An advancing reaction-front model has been proposed in the present study of facilitated transport through liquid surfactant membranes by taking into consideration a size distribution of emulsion drops. The model takes into account the continuous and outer liquid membrane phase resistances along with diffusion through composite emulsion drops. The effect of various dispersion phenomena on the mass transfer rate of solute has been discussed for two different operating conditions corresponding to different drop size distributions but having the same Sauter mean diameter. Membrane leakage is assumed to be negligible.