Nonetheless, it appears that high purity phenol crystals may be obtained at vacuum conditions by exploiting the desublimation of phenol vapor in the downstream side of the pervaporation membrane. From an industrial application point of view, it will be of significant interest to obtain high purity phenol crystals directly from dilute aqueous solutions by pervaporation for this type of conjugate solutions. Therefore, a novel pervaporation-crystallization coupling (PVCC)
system was developed in this study to recover phenol crystals from dilute aqueous solutions. Due to its high melting point, phenol can be crystallized under vacuum in the downstream condenser cooled by brine solutions. This PVCC process scheme may also be applied for the recovery of other organic compounds with high melting points (e.g.,cresol, chlorophenol and pyridine) from dilute aqueous solutions.