Recovery and reuse of water-based cleaners
AssigneeU.S. Filter Membralox
InventorsRamesh R. Bhave, Stephen P. Evans, III, Abraham S. Chen, Henry J. Weltman
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Abstract
The present invention provides a process for the ceramic filtration of contaminants from water-based cleaners by passing a feed solution of water-based cleaner and contaminants through a metal oxide membrane on ceramic support.
Claims20
A process for separating contaminants from micro-emulsion water-based cleaner in a feed solution containing said micro-emulsion water-based cleaner and contaminants comprising passing said feed solution by cross flow filtration through a sintered multichannel monolithic metal oxide membrane on ceramic support to form a permeate of said micro-emulsion water-based cleaner wherein said metal oxide membrane has a nominal pore size greater than about 50 Angstroms and less than about 1000 Angstroms and recovering micro-emulsion.
A process for separating contaminants from micro-emulsion water-based cleaner in a soiled cleaning solution containing micelles formed from non-ionic surfactant and cleaning contaminants, comprising passing said soiled cleaning solution containing micelles formed from non-ionic surfactant and cleaning contaminants cross-flow through a sintered multichannel monolithic metal oxide membrane on ceramic support to form a permeate of said micro-emulsion water-based cleaner, wherein said metal oxide membrane has a nominal pore size greater than about 0.1 micron and recovering micro-emulsion.
A process of removing contaminants from structural materials by using micro-emulsion water-based cleaners separated from a used cleaning solution containing micro-emulsion water-based cleaning solution and contaminants, comprising passing said used cleaning solution through a multichannel metal oxide membrane on a ceramic support to form a permeate of said micro-emulsion water-based cleaner wherein said metal oxide membrane has a nominal pore size in the range of 50 to 1000 Angstroms;
- and using said permeate to clean structural materials and recovering micro-emulsion.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.