Homogeneous catalyst separation and re-use through nanofiltration of organic solvents

Solvent flux behavior and rejection characteristics of hydrophilic and hydrophobic mesoporous and microporous TiO2 and ZrO2 membranes

“…Advantages are: no additives are required, thermal damage of the final product can be minimized by working at low temperatures, solvents and valuable products can be recycled, less energy is consumed and therefore the operational cost is lower [1]. Successful applications already mentioned in the literature include filtrations in the vegetable oil industry (oil processing, degumming, recovery of extraction solvents and deacidification [1][2][3][4]), pharmaceutical industry (isolation and concentration of pharmaceuticals, microfluidic purification, solvent exchange in the multi-step reaction synthesis of pharmaceuticals, separation of chiral compounds, membrane-based solvent extraction, concentration of pharmaceuticals and solvent recovery in preparative HPLC [1,4,5]), in the petrochemical industry (solvent recovery in lube oil dewaxing, applications with aromatics-containing refinery streams, desulfurization of gasoline [1,4]) and separation and reuse of homogeneous catalyst [1,4,6,7]. Many of these applications demand process stability, high availability, low requirements for preliminary treatment, minimum need for support and maintenance.…”

Fundamental studies on the performance of a hydrophobic solvent stable membrane in non-aqueous solutions

“…In this case conformational changes and aggregation of polymer chains may occur depending on the composition of the solvent. These effects are of relevance for instance in homogeneous catalysis [32][33][34][35][36][37][38] where often polymer supported catalysts are applied or in polymer fractionation.…”

Catalytic oxidation of 1,2-diols to α-hydroxy-carboxylates with stabilized gold nanocolloids combined with a membrane-based catalyst separation

“…This approach has recently been explored for the recuperation of homogeneous catalysts, e.g. with solvent-resistant nanofiltration [27,28], but has yet to prove its value for metallic sols.…”