Transport of mercury through liquid membranes containing calixarene carriers

Now membranes are widely used in many industries, e.g, dairy, food and beverage, electronics, starch and sweetener, water and wastewater treatment, pharmaceutical, biotechnology, environmental and so on. In addition to these, liquid membranes have received much attention for developing new, selective and stable systems to improve or perform separation processes involving specific chemical reactions such as ionic species, non-metallic species, bioactive materials, etc. In this aspect, liquid membranes have advantages for high selectivity towards specific ionic species and specific molecular recognition. Liquid membranes have a relatively high efficiency, and as such, are being looked into for industrial applications. We briefly discuss the transport kinetics of mercury using calixarene derivative carriers in liquid membranes and demonstrate various investigations regarding selective transport of mercury in particular using of various calixarene derivatives as a carrier. The review however does not cover all of the different approaches to liquid membrane transport, mercury transport or mercury removal. © 2007.