Ethanol-water concentration profiles in cellulose acetate membranes were measured under steady-state pervaporation conditions. Knowledge of these profiles leads to a better understanding of the diffusion process during pervaporation. The concentration profiles were determined by a film-stack method, using three to six layers. It is shown that permeation of ethanol-water mixtures proceeds in a c...

The U.S. Federal Register of April 17, 1987, contains a list of priority pollutants found at Superfund Sites. About half of these are volatile organic compounds (VOC’s), which are known to be toxic and/or carcinogenic in nature. Pervaporation is a membrane technology utilizing a dense non-porous polymeric film to separate the contaminated water from a vacuum source. A membrane is used that pref...

Recently, pervaporation separation processes have gained much attention in the separation of azeotropic and close boiling point organic-organic mixtures due to its high separation efficiency, economy, safety, and energy saving potentials. In this work, the effects of experimental factors such as feed composition and operating temperature on the performance of a commercial poly vinyl alcohol mem...

Pervaporation (PV) dehydration of isopropanol (IPA) using modified chitosan membranes was studied. The membranes were prepared from chitosan and were modified by using zeolite-A. Pre-weighed amount of zeolite-A was added into acidic solvent and stirred to produce homogeneous solution. Chitosan flakes were then added into the solution and stirred overnight. Various ratios of zeolite-A and chitos...

Article history: Received 14 December 2016 Received in revised form 12 May 2017 Accepted 14 May 2017 Available online 1 July 2017 Alcohol-permselectivity pervaporation has been arousing increasingly more attention in bioalcohol production due to the advantages of environmental friendliness, low energy consumption and easy coupling with fermentation process. With the intrinsic feature of larger ...

The development of a reactive distillation process for the production of n-butyl acetate by transesterification of methyl acetate with n-butanol is presented. Thermodynamic aspects of the quaternary system n-butyl acetate – n-butanol – methyl acetate – methanol are discussed and UNIQUAC interaction parameters derived using the Dortmund Data Bank (DDB) are given. The reaction kinetics of the het...

Copolyamides with anthrazoline units in the backbone (coPA) were synthesized and dense nonporous films were prepared by solvent evaporation. Glass transition temperature, density, and fractional free volume were determined for the dense nonporous films composed of polyamide and two of its copolymers containing 20 and 30 mol % anthrazoline units in the backbone. Transport properties of the polym...

Pervaporation membrane reactors are ideal candidates to enhance conversion in reversible reactions generating water as a by-product. This equilibrium displacement can be enhanced through close integration of reaction and separation by way of catalytic membranes. In this research, catalytic hollow fibre pervaporation membranes for the close integration of reaction and separation will be develope...

Although several separation technologies are technically capable of removing volatile products from fermentation broths, distillation remains the dominant technology. In this presentation, the status of an emerging membrane-based technology called pervaporation for the recovery of biofuels such as ethanol is reviewed and options for integrating pervaporation units with fermentors will be discus...

The ethanol fermentation process using beet molasses as the feedstock has been studied. The fermentation process, which was coupled with a membrane separation unit (Pervaporation), was compared to a conventional batch process. Ethanol was produced by Saccharomyces cerevisiae ATCC 9763 and recovered by pervaporation system using a composite polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) membrane with 10 μm thickne...