Liquid-liquid extraction and facilitated membrane transport of Pb2+ using a lipophilic acridono-crown ether as carrier

Studies on liquid-liquid extraction and bulk liquid membrane (BLM) technique-based metal ion separation by a previously published Pb²⁺-selective acridono-18-crown-6 ether selector molecule were performed. The effects of the stirring speed, the quality of apolar organic membrane, the counterions of Pb²⁺, the pH of the aqueous phase, the concentration of the source phase, the concentration of the carrier in the BLM and the temperature on the Pb²⁺-separation were investigated. Moreover, the effects of the competitive inhibition due to the presence of Ag⁺, Ca²⁺, Co²⁺, Cu²⁺, K⁺, Mg²⁺, Na⁺ and Zn²⁺ as competing ions in a multicomponent aqueous source phase of different ion-concentrations were also studied. After a proper dilution of the multicomponent aqueous source phase, excellent Pb²⁺-selectivity was achieved without a significant reduction in the efficiency compared to the liquid membrane transport of single-component systems. Based on the BLM-cell studies the applied selector molecule proved to be suitable for the development of liquid membrane-based Pb²⁺-selective separation methods, which can be greatly aided by the analysis of the effects on the separation and by the optimization of the parameters of the process discussed here.