Effect of surfactants and static electric field on characteristics of liquid-liquid mass transfer kinetics

The excitation of electrostatic field with different orientations external to the Lewis cell was applied to study the characteristics of mass transfer kinetics in stripping system of Cu²⁺-HDEHP-CCl₄/H₂O under conditions of changing stirring ratio of organic phase, and adding in surfactants SDS, Triton X-T00 and CTMAB as well as coupled electrostatic field. The results showed that without electrostatic field, the surfactant SDS could accelerate the mass transfer rate by 42.0%, but adding surfactants of Triton X-100 and CTMAB could decrease transfer rate of 45.5% and 19.8%, respectively. Without surfactants, the mass transfer process could greatly be increased by different electrostatic fields, in which the action of positive electrostatic field was the most significant with the increase of 114%. Under the effect of vertical electrostatic fields, the mass transfer rate was decreased 28.0% and 16.0% with addition of Triton X-100 and hexadecyl-trimethyl-ammonium bromide respectively in decelerating electrostatic field. However, the mass transfer rate was accelerated with the highest increase of 64.0% using sodium dodecyl sulfate. Speeding up the stirring rate not only affected the layer of interphase fluid mechanics but also changed the structure of diffusion layer.