Due to the health reason, there is considerable international
interest in the methods for the selective removal of alcohol from
alcoholic beverages with minimum effects on their taste, odor or
mouth feel [18]. The dealcoholization has been studied by many
researchers by adopting many processes such as reverse osmosis
[19–21], osmotic membrane distillation [18], hollow fiber membrane contactor [22], pervaporation [23–25], adsorption on zeolites [26], spinning cone column [27,28] and supercritical fluid
extraction [29]. Etuk and Murray [16] demonstrated the use of liquid membranes for the production of reduced-alcohol beer. Chanukya and Rastogi [2] demonstrated the use of liquid membranes
for the extraction of alcohol from simulated pineapple wine and
the extract of natural colorant namely anthocyanin. The maximum
extraction of alcohol from the wine in each cycle at optimum condition in a situation when paraffin was used as membrane phases
was reported to be 26%.
The extent of extraction depends on the membrane components
such as type of membrane phases and emulsifier used. The objective of the present work was to study the effect of type of membrane phases on the extraction of alcohol from aqueous feed
solutions containing alcohol, grape wine and natural colorant using
liquid membrane. The influence of surfactant concentration, treatment ratio, inner aqueous to membrane phase ratio, stirring speed
and stirring time on the rate of alcohol extraction from aqueous
feed has been optimized.