Treatment of organic dye solutions by electrodialysis

Laboratory tests were performed to determine the efficiency of dye solution desalination by electrodialysis. The study involved anionic dye and mineral salt recovery by obtaining two streams from a salt and dye mixture - dye-rich solution and salt solution. A standard anion-exchange and cation-exchange membranes or monovalent selective anion-exchange membranes were used in the ED stack. It was found that the separation efficiency was strongly dependent on the dye molecular weight. The best results for standard ion-exchange membranes were achieved for the desalination of Direct Black solution. Furthermore, the obtained results implied that the application of monovalent selective anion-exchange membranes improved the recovery of dye and salt solutions - the dye concentration in the diluate remained constant irrespective of the molecular weight of anionic dyes, whereas the salt recovery remained very high (99.5%).