PEBA/ceramic hollow fiber composite membrane for high-efficiency recovery of bio-butanol via pervaporation

In this work, poly (ether-block-amide) (PEBA)/ceramic hollow fiber (HF) composite membranes with high flux were prepared by dip-coating the ceramic hollow fiber with PEBA polymer solution for pervaporation (PV). The membrane fabrication was optimized by finely tailoring the coating parameters such as the viscosity and concentration of PEBA coating solution, which made the pervaporation flux as high as 4196 g/m h for recovering n-butanol from aqueous solution (1 wt% n-butanol–water mixtures) with selectivity of 21 at feed temperature of 60 °C. Furthermore, the as-prepared PEBA/ceramic HF composite membrane also exhibited stable PV separation performance during the 200 h long-term operation. Considering the practical application, the composite membrane was tested in model ABE (acetone–butanol–ethanol) system and showed a high performance for recovering n-butanol. & 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.