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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Supported Liquid Membranes and Their Modifications

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Publisher Summary This chapter discusses the principle, kinetic and transport mechanisms, stability of supported liquid membrane (SLM) design followed by thier configuration. In the examples of SLM applications presented in this chapter, the possibility to separate high quantities of compounds using small volumes of organic phases shows that this method is still a very attractive choice when an efficient and selective method is necessary. Also, as a result of the development and commercialization of hydrophobic hollow-fiber membrane contactors, SLM might be applied successfully for industrial purposes. This is due to the high-membrane surface per unit of volume with satisfactory liquid membrane stability and that HF-SLM technology is easily scalable. Therefore, there is much research to increase the applicability of SLM in the pharmaceutical and chemical industry, metal separation and recovery, wastewater treatment, gas separation, biotechnology, and analytical chemistry. Many of the new, interesting applications of SLM describe the use of the SLM concept. Thus, in the pharmaceutical industry, SLMs can be utilized in the production processes of fine chemicals and even drugs. One such possibility is described in this chapter, the resolution of drug enantiomers, the production of which is a very challenging task. The other, also involving the new advance of SLM separation in biotechnology, is to use this technique for recovery of various pharmaceutically important compounds from fermentation broths. SLMs were used to separate and recover such compounds as amino acids, for example, L-valine and antibiotics, including β-lactam or cephalosporin antibiotics. Also, other important substances were separated using an SLM system with the aim of using supported liquid membranes in bioindustrial processes.