Open Journal of Physical Chemistry, 2013, 3, 103-114 http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/ojpc.2013.33013 Published Online August 2013 (http://www.scirp.org/journal/ojpc) Methyl Cholate and Resorcinarene New Carriers for the Recovery of Cr(III) Ions by Supported Liquid Membranes (SLM)s Abdelkhalek Benjjar 1,2* , Tarik Eljaddi 1 , Oussama Kamal 1,2 , Laurent Lebrun 2 , Miloudi Hlaibi 1,2 1 Laboratoire Interface Matériaux et Environnement (LIME), Faculté des Sciences Aïn Chock, Université Hassan II, Casablanca, Maroc 2 Laboratoire des Polymères, Biopolymères, Surfaces, UMR 6270 du CNRS, Faculté des Sciences et Techniques, Université de Rouen, Mont-Saint-Aignan, France Email: * Abdelkhalek.benjar@gmail.com Received October 10, 2012; revised January 14, 2013; accepted February 10, 2013 Copyright © 2013 Abdelkhalek Benjjar et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution Li- cense, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. ABSTRACT The technique of supported liquid membranes was used to achieve the facilitated transport of Cr(III) ions, using tow amphiphilic carriers, the methyl cholate and resorcinarene. For prepared SLMs, toluene as organic phase and film of polyvinylidene difluoride, as hydrophobic polymer support with 100 μm in thickness and 0.45 μm as the diameter of the pores. The macroscopic parameters (P and J 0 ) on the transport of these ions were determined for different medium temperatures. For these different environments, the prepared SLMs were highly permeable and a clear evolution of these parameters was observed. The parameter J 0 depended on the temperature according to the Arrhenius equation. The activation parameters, Ea, ΔH ≠ and ΔS ≠ , for the transition state on the reaction of complex formation , were de- termined. To explain these results for this phenomenon, and achieve a better extraction of the substrate, a model based on the substrate complexation by the carrier and the diffusion of the formed complex   ST   ST was developed. The ex- perimental results verify this model and determine the microscopic parameters (K ass and D * ). These studies show that these parameters K ass and D * are specific to facilitated transport of Cr(III) ions by each of the carriers and they are changing significantly with temperature. Keywords: Supported Liquid Membrane; Facilitated Transport; Methyl Cholate; Resorcinarene Permeability; Flux; Association Constant; Diffusion Coefficient 1. Introduction Currently, different membrane types are used for many industrial applications, to recover or separate the con- stituents of a mixture, or to selectively control the ex- change of material between different media. The use of membrane technology has in recent years a rapid growth, particularly because of the increasing application areas. This development should be increased because of the good performance offered by membrane processes and due to the emerging needs of environmental protection (effluent treatment, clean processes…). Meanwhile, these different applications, research increasingly pushed to better understand the functioning of these membrane processes, create more efficient or more specific, and develop new methods to access new applications [1-6]. Today, it is necessary and certainly required to de- velop highly selective systems that are essential to con- sider the realization of separations and recoveries of metal ions very harmful to the environment from com- plex aqueous mixtures. For this purpose, the liquid-liquid separation technique is first widely used, with more or less suitable agents, for the recovery of metal ions from complex and loaded aqueous media. This technique in- volves the use of complexing agents and large amounts of organic solvents which are often expensive and toxic. It includes an extracting step by phase transfer, followed by back extraction step, two steps are enough consumers of organic solvents, particularly when volatile solvents. A stylish alternative to liquid-liquid extraction is the de- velopment of artificial membrane systems that mimic the * Corresponding author. Copyright © 2013 SciRes. OJPC