مح ی ط ز ی ست و مهندس ی آب Environment and Water Engineering دوره9 ، شماره2 ، ابستان ت1402 Vol. 9, No. 2, 2023 DOI: 10.22034/EWE.2022.350118.1798 Environ. Water Eng., 2023, 9(2), 179-194 ISSN: 2476-3683 Environment and Water Engineering Homepage: www.jewe.ir Research Paper Liquid-Liquid Extraction of Penicillin-G from Pharmaceutical Wastewater Via a Developed Polysulfone Hollow Fiber Membrane Contactor 1 PhD Scholar, Department of Chemical Engineering, Gachsaran Branch, Islamic Azad University, Gachsaran, Iran 2 Assist. Professor, Department of Chemical Engineering, Membrane Science and Technology Research Center (MSTRC), Gachsaran Branch, Islamic Azad University, Gachsaran, Iran 3 Assist. Professor, Department of Chemical Engineering, Shiraz Branch, Islamic Azad University, Shiraz, Iran Article information Abstract Received: July 24, 2022 Revised: September 01, 2022 Accepted: September 03, 2022 The presence of pharmaceutical wastewater can pose significant challenges to the environment. Since conventional wastewater treatment processes are not efficient for the complete separation of drug materials, solvent extraction through a hollow fiber membrane contactor could be a promising alternative. In this study, a developed polysulfone (PSF) hollow fiber membrane was fabricated using a non-solvent phase separation (NIPS) method to extract penicillin G from aqueous solutions in the membrane contactor system. From the characterization experiments, the prepared polysulfone membrane demonstrates an outer surface contact angle of 69.6°, critical water entry pressure (CEPw) of 250 kPa, total porosity of 72.2%, and collapsing pressure of 500 kPa. The extraction of penicillin G from the aqueous phase was performed with a 5% w/w solution of Aliquat 336. The effect of the operating parameters on the extraction flux of penicillin G was investigated using the response surface method (RSM). The optimum penicillin G flux of 1.46×10 -3 kg/m 2 s was found at an operating pressure of 100 kPa, an aqueous phase flowrate of 70.5 ml/min, and an organic phase flowrate of 200 ml/min. Therefore, the developed PSF hollow fiber membrane contactor can be considered a proper choice to remove antibiotics (penicillin G) from aqueous solutions. Keywords: Fiber Membrane Contactor Polysulfone Antibiotic Extraction Wastewater Treatment *Corresponding author: amir.mansourizadeh@iau.ac.ir © Authors, Published by Environment and Water Engineering journal. This is an open-access article distributed under the CC BY (license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Introduction The volume of antibiotics as causal pollutants in the environment, especially aquatic environments, has increased significantly. To remove and recycle pollutants from hospitals and urban and industrial wastewaters, membrane technology has been designed. Membrane contactor technology has been applied for gas and liquid separation thanks to the advantages such as high contact area, low operating pressure, and high efficiency. Several studies on Farzaneh Abbasi-Sourki 1 , Amir Mansourizadeh 2* and Mohammad Hossein Jazebizadeh 3