The concentrating of alizarin using a reverse osmosis process

Abstract

Membrane technologies in general and reverse osmosis in particular have been employed for the concentrating of solutions. In this study, the concentrating of a heat sensitive alizarin extracted from madder root was realized using an FT30 reverse osmosis membrane. The effects of cross flow velocity, transmembrane pressure and pH on the flux and rejection were studied. Increasing the transmembrane pressure increased the flux while the rejection was constant. At pH 7-8, the highest flux was achieved. This study showed that reverse osmosis is the process of choice for the concentrating of alizarin solutions. The optimum operating conditions were 1.0 m/s crossflow velocity, 16 bars transmembrane pressure and pH 7. The system was tested for 12 h without severe fouling problems.