Copper is becoming a vital metal due to continuous rise in its demand for circuit boards in microelectronics industry, electro refining industry, mining waste and fertilizer industry. Effluents streams of mining and metal processing industries containing heavy metal is considered to be potential threat for environment. In most part of the world there are large reserves of copper mines which catch the attention of researchers to think about cost effective and environment friendly process for the extraction. Therefore it is imperative to develop efficient techniques for copper (II) extraction industrial scale. It has been found that recovery of heavy metal in hollow fiber membrane contactor is favourable if organic solvent is diluted in less toxic and more environmental friendly diluent [1].

             In the current study recovery of copper (II) from aqueous waste streams has been studied theoretically through hollow fiber membrane contactor. Copper (II) reacted with an organic extractant at the membrane interface and thus copper complex molecules was transferred from one side of membrane to other side of membrane. Later one copper (II) was stripped out from copper-complex solution and thus the extractant was regenerated. Mathematical model describing mass transfer phenomena, poiseuille flow and design equations were integrated. The integrated process model algorithm was scripted in MATLAB® 8.1.2.

             Simulations have been performed for a wide range of different operating, process conditions and membrane/module structural characteristics in order to determine the optimum set of variables for a particular operation. The model results were found to be in good agreement with the experimental work available in literature. It was found from simulation that the model predicted the data reasonably well, proving the model to be a useful tool for evaluating the potential applications of the technology at large scale.