  Room temperature ionic liquids show potential as an alternative to
conventional organic membrane solvents mainly due to their properties of low
vapor pressure, low volatility and they are often stable. In the present work,
the technical feasibilities of room temperature ionic liquids as bulk liquid
membranes for phenol removal were investigated experimentally. Three ionic
liquids with high hydrophobicity were used and their phenol removal efficiency,
membrane stability and membrane loss were studied. Besides that, the effects of
several parameters, namely feed phase pH, feed concentration, NaOH
concentration and stirring speeds on the performance of best ionic liquid
membrane were also evaluated. Lastly, an optimization study on bulk ionic
liquid membrane was conducted and the maximum phenol removal efficiency was
compared with the organic liquid membranes. The preliminary study shows that
high phenol extraction and stripping efficiencies of 96.21% and 98.10%,
respectively can be achieved by ionic liquid membrane with a low membrane loss
which offers a better choice to organic membrane solvents.
